Soviet Afghan War Puns

I always only hear about is a war when isn’t the real issue that it was a genocide?

According to wikipedia 1.8M civilians died. 1.5 million disabled . And 7.5 million had to flee to another area or outside the country. These were ppl that didn’t even sign up for war.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Soviet-invasion-of-Afghanistan

Here it says the Soviets tried to eliminate civilian support to Mujahideen by bombing rural areas.

https://www.mei.edu/publications/afghanistans-children-tragic-victims-30-years-war

Here it says Soviets kidnapped 50k rural Afghan children to indoctrinate them.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_genocides_by_death_toll

The first wikipedia page of list of genocides doesn’t even have it listed

I fail to see how the main issue here isn’t the genocide commit on innocent Afghan civilians.

The soviets only had 14,000 killed and 50,000 wounded. How is this even a war when relatively speaking barely any Soviets died and it was the Afghans that were killed in such a large mass?

I’m not too educated on this so if I am missing something huge let me know

In the US, the Soviet-Afghan War of 1979-1989 was known chiefly for two things: Being the Soviet's equivalent to Vietnam, and giving rise to extremist Islamic terrorist groups like Taliban and Al-Queda (including Osama bin Laden), rather ironically in part because the US had backed them against the Soviets.

However, how is this looked back upon in Russia? How would people alive at the time think of it, versus those born after the Cold War had ended? Is there any notable Soviet-Afghan War media in Russia, comparable to how the US has Vietnam-based stories?

Some things I wonder. Since I've really began studying it, I've been curious as to how it's regarded in Russia today compared to the west.

With an estimated 6 million refugees according to the UN and ~1 million casualties out of a population of 13 million in 1979 according to various historians, why was this war so deadly? Even looking at a population graph shows an unprecedented decline in population from 1979-1989. Which side was responsible for the most destruction?