1. Is keeping Russia in a forever war. Draining resources and preventing them from projecting any hard power anywhere else in the world. Seems like a good deal for US to me.
But (a) it is basically prolonging the losses for Ukraine, and (b) assumes that Russian won't escalate (maybe with nukes).
Russia knows that we're not going to blow up the world to save Ukraine. At some point, they will cross a threshold and we will have to back down.
We are not going to blow up the world to save Ukraine and Russia/Putin knows this. If he decides to use nukes what are we going to do? What can we do?
No one want it, Putin and especially China. Current atomic weapon are no more the little Nagasaki Firecrackers.
They are not going to risk their security for Ukraine. They wouldn't risk starting a nuclear war over Ukraine, it's stupid, even for their standards
Think about it. They support Ukraine by sending them surplus or aged weapon systems while modernising and funnelling money to their military industrial complex (with public support!). In return Ukraine uses those weapons systems to keep Russia tied up in a war, exposing Russia's most modern weapon systems and providing a huge amount of information on how to fight a drone war.
This is a great investment independent of what happens in or to Ukraine, basically they turn weapons they needed to replace or get rid of anyway into intel, new weapons, political brownie points at home and a weakened adversary.
China doesn't mind it that much either, though they enjoy it less because they had invested fairly heavily into Ukrainian infrastructure that is being destroyed. Keeping Russia isolated makes it easy for them to extra cheap oil & gas, push for pipelines that flow to China instead of towards Europe and also offload a bunch of their industrial surplus now that their requirements are winding down and the rest of the world is trying to tariff them for dumping.
So basically the problem is 1. is good for almost everyone except Ukraine and Russia. Trump for whatever reason can't understand that and just wants to throw a tantrum as is befitting for someone of his intelligence.
EU (germany) gets increasingly deindustrialised, to a big part due to energy costs associated with the war, and the related sanctions and sabotages. This war would not have even started if the previous US administration(s) had not pushed to that direction, europe was up to that point signing energy deals with Russia, they had no incentive for a full blown war. EU was following, and now they run around like headless chicken with no purpose, goal and prospects while Trump is basically trying to cash out of the situation. But I agree with you that, whatever this has to do with, the least is about Ukraine itself and democracy. Sadly we are never gonna move on from this false narrative until it is too late.