Western countries need to ask themselves: is funding a major proxy war against the second most powerful military in the world in our long term strategic interest?
I mean, why wouldn't it be? It's directly degrading an adversary and competing power. It's a lot faster than indirect means and it's a lot cheaper than going into combat ourselves. Sure, you could spin that as "imperialist Americans using poor Slavs as proxies" but really the "proxies" want the same outcome as America. Why shouldn't people with aligned interests work together?
Russia is a gas station that happens to have nuclear weapons, not the 2nd most powerful army in the world.
You probably heard about the sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet. The Moskva was made in Soviet Ukraine, in Mykolaiv. Not in Russia. Shame they mismanaged it so much since then that just a few guided cruise missiles did the job.
The military budget of Russia is a far cry of the military budget of the Soviet Union. The scale is not even comparable, arguably the per-soldier performance went down as well.
Russia has a great domestic arms industry/natural resources and can resupply itself in isolation.
People need to realize that Russia's defense is primarily setup to defend its borders.
Any country other than the US would not fare well in a nuclear war with Russia, including China.
China hasn't been at war since the 70s. No one knows how well they would do in a conflict.
You simply cannot ignore nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are a great equalizer, that is why North Korea cannot be invaded from South Korea, despite South Korea having a much better "conventional" military.