I’m not sure why you think the goal was to hurt the west. The goal is to stop western sponsored regime in Ukraine from doing ethnic cleansing. What’s hurting Ukrainians is the fact that the west refuses to let this proxy war end. Another big reason for the war happens to be NATO expansion. Here’s Stoltenberg openly admitting why the war started:
The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.
The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.
I’ve given you lots of resources and background in this thread, but it seems like you’re not actually interested in understanding why the war is happening, and just keep repeating the same talking point.