You seem quite animated and zealous about the topic and I certainly don't want to antagonize you. I don't recognize my own positions in your portrait. You seem very passionate about it and I suppose you have particular interests in the region. Very well, but I don't and can look at the situation from afar and it just looks like typical great power politics. Every great power employs propaganda, not just Russia. And every state is subject to foreign influence. Every leader is subject to internal pressures. You seem to subscribe to a position that Putin is some kind of Stalin with absolute power. I don't see that. In fact, even Stalin wasn't Stalin. It's a fantasy to think one person can operate as leader of any great power with impunity.

I don't claim that all Western foreign policy is unified. There are ascendant factions at different moments. For the moment the China hawks are back in the driver's seat of US foreign policy and the Atlanticists are out of power for now. But Ukraine policy has been driven (very effectively) by that faction of neoconservatives for over a decade. Get a subscription to Foreign Affairs if you want the consensus opinion of State, DoD, CIA. It matters little that there are diverse opinions, only which opinions drive policy.

I don't think "only states act". Rather, the populace is a player that can be leveraged by those controlling state power. Much of the recent foreign aid debacle is about shedding some light on how these slush funds operate to both launder bribes and to fund foreign influence operations. I don't think Russia is the only power that tries to project influence abroad. Every state tries to do so for its own interests.

That said, there is rarely unity in the population. The US had a recent "people in the streets" moment and two things are both true about that. First, many, many people (perhaps a majority) did not agree with "popular opinion" so called. Not just with the more radical expressions of it but the overall framework. Second, much of the "organic" appearance of those protests were in fact astroturfed. I know several "community organizers" who were active in "getting people out in the streets" and they are currently lamenting their dried up funding. It's mostly fake. The masses will not spontaneously gather for more than a moment without organized activism keeping them on message. So, please. It is a fantasy.

It's also a fantasy that leadership is ever nice. Sovereign politics are in a state of nature. That is, a war of all against all. If some have elected to cooperate, it is because it is in their interest to do so, not because their leadership is "nice". Those are bedtime stories.

Your "primary first hand evidence" demand is a bit lazy but you can find general neoconservative policy (btw all consensus US foreign policy is neoconservative) explained in the Project for a New American Century or by carefully reading policy papers published by RAND on the topic. Or as mentioned Foreign Affairs magazine as a popularizer and influence on public opinion.

I doubt you'll take the time to upgrade your mental software but for any other readers, here are some sources that specifically deal with US post cold war policy in eastern Europe, including Ukraine and Russia.

1992 Defense Planning Guide (the Wolfowitz Papers) or read about it on Wikipedia for some choice quotes
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfowitz_Doctrine

1994 speech by Bill Clinton "A whole Europe and Free" outlines plans for NATO expansion.

1995 State Department report on NATO Enlargement.

1995 National Security Strategy of Engagement and Enlargement

2002 National Security Strategy document by Condoleeza Rice and Wolfowitz.

Orchestrated color revolutions as a tactic of regime change are implied as tools of democracy by influential neocon Natan Sharansky in his book The Case for Democracy from 2004. NED and USAID we're created to as cold war influence weapons abroad. The OG Orange color revolution in Ukraine wa in 2004, iirc. But that's just a coincidence, right?

Anyway, go read some stuff or don't. I can't hope to help someone so prejudiced. But maybe someone else can benefit from this exchange.