Hi Tyler,
At the risk of seeming condescending, I will offer my two cents. My apologies in advance if some of my recommendations are embarrassingly basic.

Magazine Foreign Affairs is outstanding. Published every two months.

Sites:
The Brookings Institute
The International Institute for Strategic Studies
As a reference source I would recommend an account with JSTOR. It has an extraordinary amount of academic papers and publications that are available to regular people who are not enrolled students or faculty.. (note, sometimes I do find restricted access)
I will let others list their sources regarding web sites and such that keep up with the Russian/Ukrainian war.

My personal opinion is if lacking foundational knowledge, reading current articles, listening to podcasts, and following the news can create a jumble of facts/opinions that don't truly add to understanding. Lacking the foundations can lead a person to take some factual data, apply reasonable thought processes, and end up with spectacularly incorrect conclusions.
To play off a regular contributor's line as a twist, to understand it's foundations, foundations, foundations.

So, unless you got it in your mother's milk, or are an actively enrolled student, that leaves us with books. Lots and lots of them.
I should spend time to give some structure and chronological order to my coming list, but that would take more time than i have. Hence, they may be a bit haphazard and i will forget some that should be included. Obviously there are thousands of them that I omit from ignorance. Hopefully others can recommend better ones (also I can add them to my knowledge base)

For a baseline of the world we live in and philosophies as to how we should approach human civilization and our relationship to the world:
'Plato's Revenge" by William Ophuls
"The Great Work: Our Way into the Future" by Thomas Berry (note: Thomas, not Wendall Berry)

In my opinion still the most comprehensive work on how totalitarian states come about:
"The Origins of Totalitarianism" by Hannah Arendt
Written in the 50's, perhaps others can update with a better one.

To gain insight in what it is to live as a vassal state/colony under Russia:
"The Captive Mind" by Czesław Miłosc.
"Imperium" by Ryszard Kapuścinski
"A Biography of no Place" by Kate Brown

For current Russia/Ukraine war:
"The Ukrainian Night" by Marci Shore. A book on the 2014 Maidan revolution. It corrects a fair number of false narratives that concern this 2014 event.
"The Gates of Europe" and "The Russo-Ukrainian War" both by Serhii Plokhy

Russia/Putin:
There are so many books on Russian history I can't choose. The last one I read was probably 50 years ago, so will let you choose.
"Putin's World" by Angela Stent....to understand Putin and not willing to join the world order
"Memory Makers" by Jade McGlynn. How WW2 history, and false history, is central to Russian identity. Orwell's insight on controlling the past is used pervasively by all authoritarian/nationalist governments.
"The Vory" by Mark Galeotti
"Putin's War Against Ukraine" by Taras Kuzio. Very out of date regarding this war but gives a crisp description of the Russian organized crime internal war that directly affects present day Russian Govt and how Ukraine came to revolution in 2014. Also the only English chapter I know of explaining the Donbas region and how it is what it is.

General geopolitics:
"A World in Disarray" by Richard Haass
"Liberal Leviathan" by G. John Ikenberry
" The Marshall Plan" and "The Battle of Bretton Woods" by Benn Steil are great overviews of the world order that emerged from ww2.

I have more but am running out of time. If this isn't what you had in mind, or it just isn't interesting i will desist.


Timothy Snyder's:
"Bloodlands'
"black Earth"
"The Road to Unfreedom"