Care to spell this out for the remedial students like me?
In an ideal world, Russia would be a liberal democracy with Western values. After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a small window of opportunity for this scenario to play out but that time is long gone. In many respects, it is one of the biggest geopolitical fumbles of the Western world in the latter half of the 20th century. The problem being that neither side really trusted the other enough to make the necessary concessions and investment of resources to make it happen.
Once the West fumbled that geopolitical golden opportunity, the West had to come to terms with the sobering realization of a fairly economically impoverished, hopelessly corrupt, loosely aligned federation of different ethnic republics having the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. In short, a pretty nightmarish scenario for world stability.
Enter Putin. A KGB agent who is able to wrangle the mafia state into submission while simultaneously being very well-versed in geopolitics. This combination placates the West's two biggest fears with Russia:
1) Russia Federation disintegrating with 6,000+ nukes. The disintegration concerns run along two tracks; the disintegration of the federation, republics -> new countries or the disintegration of the functional federal government resulting in a lack of control over the 6,000+ nukes.
2) Irrational control over 6,000+ nukes. Putin, despite his anti-Western values, it a rational and logical individual who is obsessed with his legacy. Thus, he is never going to press the proverbial red button unless there are inbound nukes to Moscow or an unstoppable army on the outskirts of Moscow. Putin's replacement, whomever that may be in the future, is not guaranteed to have these same qualities. Thus, the West is keen on being mindful between hating Putin's tactic geopolitics (expanding Russian influence) and his completely safe strategic geopolitics (not going into a hot war with NATO).
Now, fast-forward to the present day state of the conflict. Russia's economy is on the verge of collapse. Russia's army is on the verge of collapse (they are using donkeys on the frontlines). Russia is taking unbelievable causalities. Their conventional army could be defeated my NATO in a matter of days (something totally unthinkable prior to 2022). Most of the causalities are from the republics outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg which has the twofold effect of destabilizing those outside republics from there men dying and having to pull increasingly more bodies from Moscow and St. Petersburg. Oh, lets not even mention China's growing interest in their former traditional territory (rich in resources) and the growing power imbalance between those two countries.
All this to say, it is getting quite dangerous for the West's long-term strategic interests. In short, the West was able to dramatically weaken Russia and Putin for pennies on the dollar and without losing a single solider. A massive geopolitical win for the West. Unfortunately for Ukraine, the West is now in a position where they are getting increasingly less return on their investment and could end up getting massively wiped out (geopolitically) if they push too hard resulting in the fall of Putin.
