The "western" world. If you read the opinions of people outside the US / EU, the story is very different. I think this war is the failure of diplomacy on both sides, but mostly on the side of west.

In the last 30 years western media has slowly become consolidated in very few hands, along with most all of our major industries.

The news you are repeating about Russian atrocities (and I have no doubt there are many) is no longer countered in the west in any substantial way because of the massive consolidation of news.

Those same news sources are the ones that say Russia is losing. The same sources said Iraqi soldiers were throwing babies out of incubators, that Iraq had WMDs, that Libyan soldiers were being given viagra so they could rape their enemies (note this same story has now been repeated for Russians in this war!), that Assad was gassing his own people. I could go on.

I think you'll be surprised and confused, like most people in the west, when Russia - after decimating the Ukraine military around Bakhmut, finally overruns it and takes the rest of the Donbas, because the western media nearly 100% reports that Russia is constantly losing.

I think Russia realized that no matter what they did regarding Ukraine, western media would "inform" its readers/viewers that everything is 100% Russia's fault. As anyone who has been in this situation can attest, if you're going to be blamed no matter what you do or say, you might as well do it. That is a failure of diplomacy.