US weapons, US intel, US alliances and organizations... I doubt Russia looks at it and thinks "Oh, OK, the US is totally not involved. They're our friends!"
Even when we're not actively sending troops, we're busy making enemies for the next war...
they regularly declared the US was their primary enemy well before invading Ukraine, and actively leveraged aggressive information and political influence operations to destabilize the US
there is no "making enemies for the next war" -- they were always enemies
They've just off-shored the lives lost. It's not any different than off-shoring manufacturing and poisoning some third world country with the waste chemicals and runoff instead of the homeland.
