while the war has definitely been more 2 sided than expected

Depend by whom. Ukrainian army was probably the second strongest army in Europe in 2022, they have been building up greatly since 2014 and was armed by NATO. Ever since the 2022 escalation they lost and rebuild their army 2 times and NATO countries were even stripping their own line units to arm AFU. So not counting soldiers (and even that can be arguable as a lot of foreign mecenaries and "volunteers" were and still are there, and i'm not talking about reddit cannon fodder but possibly even regular forces) it is two sided war because one side is Ukraine+NATO.