Russia has settled down to the process of systematically absorbing all the best parts of Ukraine, and, they may get around to the rest of the country, as well.

This is foolish western hubris believing occupying is country is feasible or rational. The west's intelligence organizations would love to fund an insurgency to make Russia miserable. Russians are a lot more caution after the Afghanistan debacle. Occupying the totality of Ukraine is fundamentally a trap.

Sure, Russian soldiers are dying in Ukraine. But, so are a lot of Ukrainians,

More importantly Russia is disarming Europe. It's hard to have any kind of occupying force to try and invade Russia with nothing left in the tank. Nor will Europe have bodies willing to try invading. Any European solider with a functioning brain does not wants to be sent to invade Russia. The Ukrainians that are willing to invade Russia are getting eradicated. The same people that would be joining an insurgency if Russia was to occupy the entire country or voting against Russia in the future are losing more their lives, but their total political opposition to Russian interests.

What NATO still doesn't quite get, is that all they're doing by "helping" Ukraine, is hurting the Ukrainian people, and hurting themselves, and their own economies.

The current goal of NATO is to strip Ukraine for parts and literally sell it off to Black Rock and it's subsidiaries. Every war is a resource war. There is no "helping". War is about people "helping themselves" to other people's wealth and resources. Especially weak countries like Ukraine are too fragile to stop the US from forming a shadow government and forcing them into a war with the Russians. Ukraine won't be a state by the time the war is over. It will have collapsed into stateless buffer zone between Russia and rest of Europe. West Ukraine with no formal government structure benefits the Russia security state by letting them have carte blanche to shape West Ukraine as they see fit without occupying the area directly. I expect West Ukraine will be heavily dependent on Russian humanitarian aid once the West slips out the back door.

NATO is trying to teach Russia a lesson,

NATO is fighting Russia due to their interference with the US coup in Syria. This prevented the Saudi/UAE pipeline from running oil and gas pipe lines through the middle east to the balkens to directly compete with Russian oil and gas production. Effectively putting Russia in the dog house by by having the Saudis and UAE temporarily drive European oil and gas prices into the ground. This benefits the Saudis and the UAE by putting a global competitor in the oil business under their thumb. Europe benefits by ensuring an abundant oil and gas supply from cheap suppliers whether the Saudis or the new balkanized Russia they had intended to create. Naturally the Russians did not want to stay Europe's whipping boy and decided to protect their interests. However many Russian oligarchs that would very much like to see Putin put down so they may rise again as petty lords. They paid US politicians handsomely to do their bidding and pursue a regime change war through the Ukrainian puppetry. This has lead to some Russians learning how fly the hard way. All that pain and suffering for what? A little bit more money and power.