It’s genuinely a lot more complicated than that.
Just look at how officials in positions of power in the the British state reacted, especially people like Ben Wallace.
They’re clearly, shamelessly happy that this war is going on. They love it! The fact Ukraine is getting destroyed as a viable nation is neither here nor there, they don’t care at all.
To them it’s still 1880 and they’re playing the Great Game again, never mind the fact Britain would struggle to fight its way out of a wet paper bag in 2026
If Putin is going continue Russia's imperial politics then I think that the British engaging in their very long habit of opposing conquerers on the Continent should be appreciated by everyone.
The complicated start of the war is that the circumstances of the Soviet breakup created a Ukraine entangled with Russia, and when the Ukrainians wanted to join the EU and attain the associated prosperity and reforms, Russia responded in the ways familiar to it, and to Putin.