I usually hear it phrased in what I think of as "Europa Universalis-speak": where people talk about Ukraine and Palestine and Russia and Israel and America as if those are individual thinking entities. This is of course absurd. A state cannot think, nor can it suffer. Humans and societies can think and suffer, but those existed for millenia before states and they'll continue to exist for millenia after states.
If someone asks "should we let Ukraine cease to exist?" then it feels like a weird question. Obviously the state of Ukraine should cease to exist if that'll provide even the smallest uptick in general human happiness, the same as any other state. States are just some stuff we made up on paper because they benefitted us, and if they stop benefitting us we should tear up that paper.
Judging from the number of people who either fled from Ukraine or took up arms in its defence, many people do not believe that their lives would be improved if they stopped being Ukrainians and became Russians.
Judging from the number of people who didn't take up arms until conscription was introduced, not everyone feels that way.
Perhaps the corpses piled up in Bakhmut and Avdiivka would choose to renounce their patriotism if it meant remaining alive. Perhaps not. Humans are diverse at the best of times, and this isn't the best of times. It's easy for the callous to write words into the mouths of the dead.
What gets me about the whole thing is that so many people, regardless of their stated political position, simply do not give a shit about the Ukrainians as human beings. They talk only in Europa Universalis-speak, about states, and regard the individual humans as simply a means of carrying out the wills of those states.