Swap the US and Russia and replace "Ukraine" with "North Vietnam" and you have a historical conflict which everyone agrees was a proxy war. How is this different?
You seem to forget Ukraine in this equation entirely, you know, the country that is the victim of Russian aggression including murder of civilians, rape, and theft.
They are constantly begging for help to fight the invaders. Is it remotely possible that's why the US is helping for this reason and to stop Russian aggression?
Any "hurt" Russia receives is entirely self inflicted. This is a war of their choice.
I don't know how people buy such uninformed BS. First, a lot of ex-USSR states are already NATO members. So, no game.
Further, USSR was a political construct. Their whole expansionism was based on that. Russia on the other hand is a nation state. They are not capable of annexing any region where there is no Russian-speaking + Russia-aligned population. Putin knows that very well.
As put by people who probably know better [1]:
One obvious difference between the Soviet Union and Russia is that the Soviet governing elite embraced Marxism-Leninism and its objective of world revolution. Today's Russia is not a messianic power.
Then you are forgetting about Georgia where Russia fought a war in 2008 resulting in Russia creating South Ossetia on Georgian land. Exactly the thing they now tried to do with Luhansk and Donetsk.
Then there is Kazakhstan where Russia did a military intervention to support the government in 2022, this year! Although, Kazakhstan seems to want to sever the ties to Russia now.
I have a feeling that you don't know anything about this topic and just read a single article and now feel informed while in reality you were hit by Russian propaganda. The author of the article you posted thinks that NATO made Russia invade Ukraine by expanding to far East, explicitly following Russian talking points.
And obviously, all actual fighting and dying is done by Ukrainians. They are the ones being tortured and oppressed on occupied territories too. If Russia won, all Ukrainians would be oppressed by Russia.