It feels totally different than offering a modicum of aid to a western aligned country fighting an existential invasion from an antagonistic former superpower.

Wait for the propaganda machine to kick in. Hopefully people will be more aware of it this time thanks to the unpopularity of the man in charge, rather than taking things at face value.

Hundreds of billions of dollars, likely now trillions after all is accounted for, is not a "modicum." To say nothing of the indirect cost of sanctions and economic sacrifice, which would easily send it into the trillions. And when a war could end at any moment, but continues only because a nation's leader refuses a peace settlement, ostensibly because it involves surrendering a sliver of controlled land that's going to be lost anyhow, that's not an "existential" conflict.