Team politics. Looks like an electoral map.
Algeria being more on board than Russia is sauced
My instinct when I think about some country like Bangladesh is that those who side with Russia aren’t signing up to something like, “Russia has the right to its war because Ukraine is really Russia/Russia has the right to invade whomever it wants” or that kind of thing, but more thinks “We’re broadly for Russia and against the West, so Russia winning and the West losing is good for us.”
That then leads me to think: how much of my country’s siding with Ukraine is the same but flipped: “Russia is our enemy from the cold war, if not before, so Russia losing is good for us.”
But I think it would be difficult to sustain a pro-Russian perspective if you got much of the reporting that we do about daily civilian deaths from the bombardment of Ukrainian cities. That then makes me wonder how much those countries’ media makes of Ukrainian attacks on Russia. I can imagine that if you didn’t really follow the war closely, so you don’t remember that Ukraine started off only just about able to repel a massive invasion, you could think that Ukraine’s attacks are unjustified or even atrocities.
I’m honestly curious why someone would agree with Russia. A larger country that forced itself into someone elses sovereign land. Or is it just really good propaganda?
I’m putting this behind a spoiler, because it seems like a good faith question but I also expect many people don’t want to see an answer.
click here
From the pro-Russia perspective (though I consider myself neutral), the separatists had the right to secede, the DPR was a legitimate state, and Ukraine sending troops to suppress them was “forcing itself into their sovereign land.” If the DPR was a legitimate state, that would mean that Russia was simply responding to their request for military aid.
So, everything depends on the question of whether the DPR, and whether Ukraine, were/are legitimate states.
From the pro-Ukraine perspective, the separatists were always just Russian proxies, armed men who seized government buildings and held an illegal and rigged vote, while the Ukranian government is a democracy representing what the people really want.
However, the pro-Russia side would counter that the Euromaidan uprising was controlled by American proxies, and involved armed men seizing government buildings and then holding an illegitimate vote to oust the president. Then, they proceeded to ban the opposition parties popular in eastern Ukraine, denying them a chance to voice their positions, or to persue secession through peaceful, legal means.
So, the question of who is legitimate depends on which armed men seizing government buildings you read as foreign proxies vs representing genuine popular will.
The reason why I consider myself neutral is simply that I treat both groups of armed men seizing government buildings with equal skepticism. Perhaps they’re both fully proxies and it’s just a proxy war, or perhaps they both legitimate, and the people in the disputed regions genuinely wanted to secede. But I’m not willing to treat one group of armed men seizing government buildings as legitimate and the other as proxies, without good reason, because I consider that biased.
But there does seem to be at least some genuine support for secession in the east and if that’s the case I fail to see why they shouldn’t be allowed to leave. If there wasn’t, then Ukraine wouldn’t have banned opposition parties. If Ukraine wants them in their country then they shouldn’t have restricted their voice in government.
I learned something new today thank you and yes this was indeed a good faith question. As US citizen, I want to understand my fellow (wo)man even on the other side of the world.
I’m also American, but I appreciate it. Frankly, a lot of it also just comes from being burned out by 20 years of Afghanistan, which made me skeptical of mainstream narratives and interventionism. A lot of what we were told about the wars in the Middle East were lies, and we have the same politicians and same media figures, none of them faced any consequences, so I’m more open to considering other narratives than I might otherwise be.
More like atrocious Western PR. I’m from one of the pro-Russia countries and the perception here is that essentially the West is evil therefore causing trouble for the West is good. Ukraine itself doesn’t actually factor at all into the calculation. Multiple issues with cultural cache here (chiefly Palestine) have the West on the wrong side of history and you can probably see why that’d make people automatically sceptical when Western countries champion a cause for “human rights.” Anything coming from Western media is also going to be viewed with scepticism because of their awful track record on Palestine in particular. All of this means that unless someone actually cares about the war and tries to learn more about its background they’ll be making a judgement off “West bad” and nothing else. It’s not even that Russian media has better penetration (I don’t think it does); people just assume the Russia is in the right because they have a history of opposing Western interests. Which, I mean, if you told me five years ago that there would be a situation where the West was undisputably the good side I’d have probably laughed at you; I think Westerners don’t appreciate just how absurd this is in the context of the past two centuries of Western foreign policy.
TL;DR: Ukraine is being punished by association for two centuries of Western imperialism.
Thanks for adding to the conversation. I’m from the US and I’m just generally embarrassed the with how the western world has acted like its this pristine monolith of what humanity should strive for.
Just wanted to say something as I’m the guy who asked the honest question. Not specifically directed at you, but just because we come from Western nations, doesn’t me we are all Brainwashed into thinking one philosophy is better than the other.
Personally I strive to be a critical thinker and be skeptical of all edicts.
Interesting perspective, thanks for sharing
Ukraine is being punished because of two centuries of local leaders opting for easy western cash at the expense of the greater local populace.
Reminder that the US would never have existed had it not been for opportunistic Iroquois and later Huron leaders propping them up.
Imperialism doesn’t become less imperialist when you do it through a sock puppet, so sure? The greater local populace can and does just hate both sides of that equation.
Often they dont realize how much the local elite benefit from it.
E.g. that Bibi helped ensure Hamas survived and dominated in Gaza over the more peace oriented groups.
They have a skewed vision of reality due to government censorship
Fascists
Well yeah the leaders of all of this countries are likely a tad fascist, but I doubt the general public is.
It’s all rainbows and sunshine when it’s not happening to you. You can have all the stupid opinions you want. But when something bad happens to you, that’s when the crying starts.
I’ve been under the impression that China and the US wants the precedent so they can do the same themselves
I sure hope the white outline of former Czechoslovakia means “no data” rather than “can’t decide”…
Does this mean that around 30% of Russia ‘agree more with Russia’?
Algeria appearing ever so slightly more pro-Russia than Russia is based.
Seems kinda on the high end tbh.
I believe the “correct” response to questions like these in Russia is “it is none of my business.”
Yeah, openly saying that the war is bullshit will land you in front of a court, then in prison and then on the front line.
Is america more pro ukraine than europe? Its hard to say from the shadding bu tthe us seems to be a bit darker. Even crazier the parts on the border seem pretty light blue.
The source is from this company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliance_of_Democracies
I’m surprised North Korea isn’t a dark orange on this map. I thought their state-run media had been heavily pushing the idea of Ukraine being nazis or evil or something. Are they just sending their soldiers over there to be Russian cannon-fodder without even trying to convince them they are the good guys?
maybe they just don’t know that much about it, I could see why their local state run media would probably rather focus on internal new, and about they sending some soldiers to the front, it is probably more about testing their strategies and training than to support any side, same thing goes for the chinese soldiers which those I think were volunteers, but they probably got approval and support and probably were asked to send reports back home about how is it going, again to collect data about their performance of their doctrine and combat strategies in practice, before WW2 many countries did the same or used opurtunities to help foreign states as also a training ground
fake
