I hope I don’t sound super ignorant and/or stupid when I say this, but I’m constantly baffled and extremely frustrated how Putin has gotten both right wing and left wing people on his side with his rhetoric with all his propaganda. I mean, yeah, that's what propaganda is, but the fact that he's gotten two totally different sides of the political spectrum to unite in his war against Ukraine, against Ukraine (and neither side seems to care/realize) is honestly kinda enraging.
Right-wingers and conservatives seem to love him because he parades around “traditional values,” especially with anti-queer rhetoric and says a women's greatest calling/duty is to have a bunch of kids (and a few months ago, a Texan man moved his family to Russia to escape “woke,” joined the army, and got tricked into being sent to the front lines), and yet despite that, despite Putin CLEARLY not being progressive, I’ve seen multiple people (a lot of communists and tankies, who claim to be left-wing) celebrate his invasion and claim that Putin was “desperate to stop NATO aggression” when he invaded Ukraine (even though Ukraine isn’t even part of NATO and wouldn’t want to join NATO so badly if it wasn’t for Russian aggression, with a desire to join NATO drastically increasing after they were invaded in 2014). These people claim to be above falling for propaganda, yet swallow Kremlin propaganda like nobody’s business. They don’t care about/deny the atrocities Russia is committing in Ukraine, such as murder of civilians, kidnapping and trafficking of children, torture of civilians, torture of up to 95% of Ukranian POWs, and rape). Some of these (often Western) online communists/tankies are so naive and uneducated that they unironically think that only Western countries can be imperialistic, and I’ve seen people say that supporting Ukraine means you are supporting Western imperialism, which therefore forgives and absolves Russia of all its aggression, war crimes, and crimes against humanity towards Ukraine, because the biggest country in the world invading a smaller country apparently is… *checks notes* anti-imperialist. (And that's not even touching on how tankies and communists will look Eastern Europeans in the eyes as said Eastern Europeans are explaining how Stalin killed half their family and say, "Well, your family must've been capitalist oligarchs, so they deserved it :)" or just straight up say "no, that didn't happen, that's just propaganda")
A lot of communists/tankies also use the fact that Putin is pro-Palestine (although he still tries to maintain decent relations with Israel), has repeatedly criticized Israel over the past few years, and calls what is happening in Palestine a “humanitarian catastrophe” (although as of writing this now, I don't believe he has called it genocide) as proof that he’s an amazing person or whatever, or not imperialistic to Ukraine, or that Ukraine deserves everything happening to it, even though he’s a complete hypocrite for calling Israel out for bombing civilians and violating treaties when he’s doing the same thing. I'm pro-Palestine, but I sure as hell am not pro-Putin for anything, considering he is a murderous, authoritarian dictator, but there seem to be swarms of people who can't understand hypocrisy, and seem to think supporting one good thing or being right about one thing, ie the catastrophic destruction in Palestine thanks to Israel (and yes, I do think it is a genocide), makes Putin right about everything else.
A lot of people use the argument that Zelenskyy is much more pro-Israel than pro-Palestine to say supporting Ukraine=supporting imperialism, as Zelenskyy strongly condemned Hamas as terrorists on October 7th and was very pro-Israel in 2023, comparing Israel to Ukraine when the attack happened and repeated that Israel has the right to defend itself, but said in 2024 he also supports a two-state solution and expressed concern for the amount of civilian casualties in Palestine, calling for Israel to stop the war to stop civilian casualties, and has said he is ready to send aid to Palestine, and actually has done so, some of which was actually missile struck by Russia! Russia hates Ukraine far more than it supports Palestine! And Iran is supplying Russia with weapons and aid to kill Ukrainians, so obviously, Zelenskyy doesn’t support Iran. But none of that seems to matter to some people, but honestly, even if Zelenskyy was the worst person imaginable, how does that at ALL justify Russian aggression against Ukraine? Russia has tormented Ukraine for centuries, long before Israel existed. Saying Ukraine deserves to be killed because of their government's attitudes to Israel makes no sense, because not only does Ukraine not fund Israel, but Russia has, again, for centuries had imperialistic notions towards Ukraine that have nothing to do with Israel and Palestine. How does anything begin to justify the cultural genocide in Ukraine--because what else can you call kidnapping children, giving them new names and new Russian families, forbidding them from expressing their culture, and forcing them into the military when they turn 18--the human trafficking, the sexual violence, the torture chambers in occupied territories, the starvation and torture of POWs--one POW even had "Glory to Russia" burned onto his body--, the bombing of hospitals, the murder of civilians? But thanks to propaganda and people just not thinking, some right wingers don't have any empathy for Ukraine and think Russia is amazing (all while screaming "we need to take care of our own!" while actively cutting aid to their own) and many communists/tankies think that invading Ukraine and committing horrific atrocities is somehow justified. But one thing remains consistent among both those groups: they blame Ukraine from their comfortable, safe homes where they are not bombed, and have no family from Eastern Europe who lived through the USSR, and say that Ukraine should just give up territory to appease Russia and stop the war, because appeasement worked so well for a certain other dictator in the 1930s, as if Russia wouldn't kill thousands more people by taking over Ukraine, terrorize them like they did in Stalin's time, imprison and/or execute the Ukrainian government and replace them with Kremlin puppets, and have the violence in Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories be even more widespread.
This was a whole rant, and I will say that I am not Ukrainian, and I would welcome any Ukrainians correcting any incorrect information here or providing more insight. But this was just a frustrated rant about Russian propaganda, I suppose, and how people fall for it so easily.
