[blitzar]

The United States and its allies have dropped at least 326,000 bombs and missiles on countries in the greater Middle East/ North Africa region since 2001.

People 30 and under in the region have barely known a day when the US were not bombing them or their neighbouring countries - that is bound to have a pretty strong effect on how you view a country.

[mopsi]

326 000 is 5 days' worth in terms of Russian invasion of Ukraine at its peak intensity. Those who are 30 and under have seen only a one year when Russia has not been at war - during the economic crisis that followed Asian financial crisis of 1997. But this does not get even remotely as much attention as wars involving the US, because there are no paid shills flooding every imaginable place with stale copypastas about foreign wars, skewing people's sense of proportion.

[blitzar]

> there are no paid shills flooding every imaginable place with stale copypastas about foreign wars

This is not true. All sides have literal "paid shills" producing propaganda online, on our (and their) TVs and in the Cinemas. If you are unaware of this, or truly believe "only the other side does that" then the propaganda has worked extremely well.

[aguaviva]

The West also has paid shills promoting is propaganda - this is very true of course.

But it's usually either comparatively benign (promoting fluff films like Top Gun), or quite transparent (like RFE/RL which makes no effort to hide the fact that it is government supported). And it usually doesn't lie outright, but prefers to use much more subtle forms of manipulation (e.g. "nation-building" and all that).[0]

Russian/Chinese propaganda meanwhile is incredibly blatant, and has no compunction at all against straight up lying, or saying the sky is blue when it's actually orange. Or in Russia's case, that a war of naked aggression that was very much optional for them is really a defensive war that was forced on them, and so forth.

The point is here is not that one side is "good" and the other is "bad". But to suggest (as you seem to be doing) that there's some kind of basic equivalence at play, in terms of the scale and kinds of propaganda used by the respective parties is very naive.

[0] The insane lies and other propaganda used to promote the 2003 Iraq war were a major exception to this general tendency, of course. In that sense, they were much closer in spirit to Russian/Chinese-style propaganda.

[vrc]

And I don’t think Ukrainians have fond feelings about Russia either.. Both things can be objectively bad for the people being bombed.

[boffinAudio]

There is an unheard population of Ukrainians who want the war to stop and for there to be peace with their Russian cousins.

It is the Western powers who are sacrificing Ukraine in order to put Western weapons systems on Russias borders. Not the Ukrainian people.

And, in the context of what was done to Iraq (5% of its population murdered for the purposes of the USA's racist, elitist ruling classes), it is no wonder that this silence is perpetuated.

[aguaviva]

There is an unheard population of Ukrainians who want the war to stop and for there to be peace with their Russian cousins.

Actually, they are very much heard from, and their views are carefully studied by public opinion researchers.

However (1) they are a minority and (2) you are definitely misrepresenting their views to suggest that favoring an early ceasefire means "wanting peace with their Russian cousins", per your disingenuous choice of phrasing there.

It is the Western powers who are sacrificing Ukraine in order to put Western weapons systems on Russias borders. Not the Ukrainian people.

As if the solid majority in Ukraine who wishes to continue the fight (along with all of those who foolishly sign up to go the front) were just puppets, with no idea as to why the fight was really being waged, and no ability to see through this gigantic sham that has been foisted upon them, which should be as plainly obvious to them as it is to you.

That's some deep insight you have, there.