14000 Ukrainians died in Crimea and Donbass since 2014 before the US supplied weapons to Ukraine. Russia's first invasion of Ukraine in 2014 predates and is uncorrelated to American-generated "false hopes". Russia's invasion is completely correlated to the threat of the good example--a prosperous and democratic Ukraine that's a candidate for EU membership and that supplies its own natural gas to EU economies, displacing Russian gas. This is how Ukrainian independence is an existential threat to Russia.

My tech entrepreneur friend in Kyiv is a veteran of that war. Do you define his hopes for Ukrainian sovereignty as a "false hope"?