So, doing what the US and friends do for several decades already?
Funny how the double standard works.
1. The US goes into Afghanistan. It supports the rivals to the Afghanistan, pumps money into building infrastructure and education, tries to train up the local military to resist the Taliban once they're gone. They fail miserably at dealing with corruption and it all falls apart, but during the US presence in Afghanistan, quality of life improved. Education, access to health care, utilities, etc.
2. The US invades Iraq. It destroys Saddam's brutal dictatorship, and tries to set up a democratic government to replace it. This fails miserably and the country basically collapses into anarchy once the US pulls out, rise of ISIS and all, but
while the US was still present there, the standard of living rose, much in the same way it did in Afghanistan.
In both cases, the US never intended to annex territory, wanted to get out as soon as reasonably possible, and it was only
once it left that everything went to shit. Many reasonable criticisms can be laid at how things there were handled, including some collateral damage taken during the ini but any honest look at the situation will say that things were better while the US was there.
Russia, on the other hand, starts bombing cities indiscriminantly from the start, and later moves on to deliberately targeting civilians with its missile strikes. The areas they occupy tell many tales of war crimes, mass graves are found, children are abducted, people are tortured, etc, etc.
It's explicitly a war of territorial conquest, Russia has formally declared it's annexing parts of Ukraine, they claim that Ukraine isn't a real nation in the first place, they openly state intentions to slaughter the entire government because they're all supposedly nazis...
Yes, these things are
definitly the same as each other. This is totally a double standard, not a false equivalency.
Or, shall we look at what happened to North vs South Korea over the last 70 years?
The communists started a war, trying to invade and conquer South Korea. The US and allies go in to protect South Korea, and a very bloody war is fought over several years, ultimately ending with a heavily-fortified border and a cease-fire, but no formal peace treaty or normalization of relations.
North Korea, the Soviet proxy state, is infamous as one of the most brutal and contemptible regimes in existence. Almost the definition of a failed state, with large swathes of the country constantly on the verge of starvation, it would arguably have imploded already if it weren't for humanitarian food aid.
South Korea, the American ally/protectorate, one of the most prosperous nations in the world, with a democratic (if
really weird ) government, a peer or leader in advanced technology and industry. It has its share of corruption issues, but although there has been a
continuous garrison of US forces in there for almost a third of the USA's
existence, it still somehow manages to be the polar opposite of what became of various Russian/Soviet client states.
Funny, the difference in what happens to nations the US moves its military into, compared to those that the Russians move
their military into.