[prepend]

Perhaps. The reason I hav the suspicion is because it seems like Russia benefits the most in this situation from have a narrative against Ukrainian refugees and conflating Ukraine’s issues with Syria’s issues.

Logically, there are so many differences between the two populations it wouldn’t make sense to actually make a racism claim (eg, Syrians were high percentage young male vs Ukrainian families; Syria over multiple years vs Ukrainians in weeks; 8M Syrians vs 1M Ukrainians; Syrians travel across multiple countries far away vs Ukrainians in neighboring countries; we’re only weeks in for Ukraine vs years for Syria; etc etc).

The two situations are very different so comparing the two and then saying that the reason is racism seems pretty silly. So I think “what’s more likely, silliness or Russian bots?”