I struggle with the whataboutism, sure, ethically you cannot justify littering just because you saw someone else do it. But in a competitive environment that simply doesn't work, and the appropriate term for such action is preferential treatment/discrimination, and it just gives an unfair advantage to one side. For my friends, everything; for my enemies, the law e.g. Coworker comes in late all the time, but the first time you come in 15min late to work you get written up/reprimanded. Or your team gets a fault for doing exactly the same thing that the opposing team was allowed to do the whole game. Or your kids test gets marked down for the same mistakes that all of the other kids got away with ...

As to your other angle, it all comes down to perspectives or frames of reference if you wish. One side tries to frame the conflict in terms of a separate, individual localized incident where Russia out of the blue attacks small Ukraine for a land grab. Very easy to argue for Ukraine as a victim and dismiss Russia with crazy Putin as a big bad aggressor, pretty clear cut whats good and bad.

But taking a step back and looking at a bigger picture you realize that suddenly things are not so simple, and some things don't make sense at all. Clearly by officially providing live intel and 17,000 anti-tank missiles and 2,000 stinger anti-aircraft missiles to Ukraine makes it a proxy war for superpowers with Ukraine stuck in the middle. Now this is where things get very nuanced, not so black and white, and now whats good and whats bad isn't so clear anymore. Just because things are complicated doesn't make Russia right, but people start thinking, and this is not the field mass media and people with agenda, want to play on.