I generally agree with you that there is a lot of hipocracy in the west and I hope (arguably this might be wishful thinking) that Europe sees this as a sign tha

I generally agree with you that there is a lot of hipocracy in the west and I hope (arguably this might be wishful thinking) that Europe sees this as a sign that if we want to be believable on a world stage we need to be more critical of wrongs happening in other places be it criticising the US, the French, the Chinese and let's not forget that the European were pretty lenient towards Putin for a long time as well). That said there are at least two key differences between Ukraine and previous conflicts. 1. Historically conflicts in Europe are the ones who go out of hand and become world-wide conflicts. I actually believe many in the west hoped that Russia would take over Ukraine quickly, install a puppet government and things could go back to the low intensity latent conflict. 2. Ukraine was an elected democratic government which really did not do much to easily paint them as "bad" guys. That's quite a contrast to Serbia, Iraq or Afghanistan. I'm not defending previous Western aggression, to be clear and have been highly critical of US foreign policy (as a side note one should criticise them for the behaviour in Latin America much more than the Middle East). That said it is very clear to me who the bad guys are here. A Russian student of mine said to me, "the Ukrainians are not just fighting for themselves there also fighting for us Russians to get rid of putin)