It's not zero in return, why would Ukraine agree to that? Where is your source that it was zero in return?
> and we're not talking stacks of cash here but rather the "value" of military hardware, much of which already had an expiration date and was literally designed and built for the Russia-invades-Europe scenario
That's not true at all, US has sent billions of financial aid[0]. Compare that to Europe's aid which was majority in the form of loans, which Europe gets to collect interest on based off of frozen Russian assets.