I mean, the US cold war had several "real" wars as a result of it. Korea and Vietnam were actual wars with humans shooting at each other, but they're considered part of the "Cold War" because both of them were sort of indirect, since the real enemy was the USSR.

Just a proxy conflict. Just need to figure out if Russia is the main power or the Chinese (or NK) proxy.

If so, then Russia is the proxy of China, while Ukraine is proxy of Canada, Germany, Poland, Australia, etc.

But Ukrainians aren't part of any "We", from my perspective. We prudently formed no alliances with them.