I agree, actually. It looks a lot like Afghanistan.

But you remember, even though the US foreign policy establishment basically got every single outcome it wanted from supporting the rebels in Afghanistan, right up to the split up of the Soviet Union and Russia becoming a republic run on Chicago school of economics principles by a pro-US president, in another couple of years they instead got Russia back as an enemy state and al Qaeda.

Also, while the situation ended up back in a pretty bad place for the US, that's nothing to where Afghanistan ended up. I think the US should try pretty hard avoid winning, if winning means the same as the way they won in Afghanistan. And Ukraine should definitively avoid an Afghanistan-style victory at all costs.

So what. From the USA perspective, that outcome was still a lot better than having the old USSR in place. Keep the pressure on and maybe a few more of the outlying regions will break away. A long and bloody internal civil war would be ideal but anything that keeps Russia poor and weak would be a win.

Ukraine is different because Ukraine is fighting under one identity, that of their legitimate elected government. Afghanistan's Communist government was deposed by the warlords, who then began carving fiefdoms for themselves, which eventually gave rise to corruption, then the counter-corrupt-govt movement (the Taliban), and eventually a safe haven for Al Qaeda. That was also the reason for the US nation-building efforts in Afghanistan to fail miserably.