honestly i appreciate you attempting to engage this - truthfully, i find the entire premise of appealing to morality in a war fruitless, and my intentions in making the statement above was to imitate that this is a effect that has been repeated for many generations (whether or not it is true).
ultimately people do things to advance their own goals & stamp out contradictions, not on the basis of morality.
this attempt to say this is moral and that isn't could go on until the next generation of soldiers is born - and it would be pointless because the narrative accepted will often be the media machine with the biggest wallet until some massive contradiction.
ultimately what are your goals here, what are the perspective of the shoes of the russians and the ukrainians, what is the context etc.
perhaps it's as simply resolved as the issue of the jupiter missles, or perhaps peace was never going to be a option(from your stance of the "russian imperialists" or my stance that the American west desire to remain a world power).
truthfully i am of the opinion the americans seeks to remain a world power [hence the 800 military bases around the world vs the russians 21], and will take advantage of any conflict to pose as the morally high ground in a "just war", or proxy war in this case.
i don't think peace was ever an option, russia most likely sees ukraine as a staging ground for nato as it did in operation Barbarossa, or napoleon, or seeks minerals, or believes the new government is too nationalist for their own taste (why does it have to be one point?)
all that matters is that is a war to extinguish contradictions that pose existential threats, another form of competition for capital.