Thread by @WilliamYang120

“But in countries where governments have remained neutral, tacitly supported Russia or encouraged the dissemination of false accounts of the war, citizens are voicing a much more complicated and forgiving narrative of Mr. Putin’s invasion.” #Ukraine nytimes.com/2022/03/17/wor…

“Interviews with dozens of people in those countries — from Vietnam to Afghanistan to South Africa to China — reveal that while many are disturbed by the war and the loss of innocent lives, some are sympathetic to Russia’s justifications for its invasion of Ukraine, ...

... and do not accept the good versus evil scenario presented by the United States and Europe.”

“Their views are shaped by factors such as their countries’ deep and historic ties to Russia and the history of interventions and atrocities perpetrated by some Western countries — as well as disinformation and censorship that in some places is propagated by the state.”

“Many found resonance in the argument that Ukraine’s effort to join NATO compromised Russia’s security. Some held on to a nostalgia for the old Soviet Union. Still others could not side with a West that they viewed as hypocritical.

These attitudes have helped prime the pump for the flourishing of conspiracy theories about the war.”

“The U.S. invaded Iraq and no one made the same noise as people are doing against Putin,” said Eni Aquino, 52, a sports commentator from Goiânia in midwestern Brazil.

“Arthur Maia Caetano, 68, said that since shutting down his restaurant in Rio de Janeiro because of the pandemic, he has been using his time to read Russian news websites and bulletins from the 70 or so groups that he follows on the social messaging app Telegram.”

“When I started to look carefully at war, I saw that the first to die is the truth,” Mr. Caetano said, citing unfounded claims circulating online, such as that Ukraine has hired actors to pretend they were injured ...

... and that it maintains biological weapons laboratories funded by the United States.