Because the warmongers were in charge. They aren't any longer.
Look at the commentary about it. It's despicable. People from 6000 miles away praising the effort to destabilize Russia, to bring Russia to its knees. It's worth it, they say.... because it's not their sons and husbands and fathers dying. It's incredible to me that THIS position is still supposedly the morally virtuous one. Absolutely heinous stuff. What's a million dead Ukrainian men when you get to fulfill your violent foreign policy agenda, right?
No one ever said it was a morally superior position. It's a utilitarian position.
0: Russia is anti-west. If you are a freedom loving, free market, capitalist, you want Russia to have the minimum amount of power and influence (money and guns) possible.
1: Russia invaded Ukraine. In a Land Grab. Because Russia has trouble feeding it's citizens. This makes Russia the aggressor, full stop.
2: You can't send in the full force of NATO, to Bomba them back to the Czarist days, because Russia has nukes. Nuclear war means billions of deaths.
3: So your options are 1) let russia expand unchecked, which is against item [0:], or 2) let russia beat their heads against Ukraine and exhaust their resources.
Russia made a choice for there to be deaths in this conflict. The number of deaths can not be zero, due to Russia's actions. The utilitarian approach is to then minimize _total_ deaths. 1 million Ukes is less than 5 million Europeans. And as a world leader, 0 of my citizens is better than !0 my citizens.
The world is a hard, cold place. There are no good decisions, only better or worse ones. A less influential Russia is a good thing, full stop.