Probably quite favorably. There appears to be broad support for Ukrainians across the entire political spectrum in the western world. I can’t think of any other recent issues that have united the western world so completely.
What kind of judgement did you have in mind?
I'm sure everyone is desperate to avoid ending up as a modern Chamberlain, trading land for a sham promise of peace, but we do ignore a very real question: should we be treating borders as perfect and correct?
There is a reasonable case to be made that when the USSR partitioned, it created some hard borders between communities that formerly were "closer", historically, culturally, or economically, to a different republic than the one they were assigned to.
Any partitioning is going to end that way-- see India/Pakistan, any sort of two-state Israel/Palestine solution, the two Koreas, or even the split of Virginia during the US Civil War.
But nobody can really right that sort of relationship peacefully because someone stands to lose territory. These things end up getting ironed out with bloodshed. It may be inevitable.
There's also the whole problem that we didn't really "win the peace" after the end of the Cold War. Compare Germany and Japan after WWII. The winners flooded them with aid and guided their reconstruction in ways that let them prosper going forward. They ended up as advanced economies tightly woven into the Western economic system.
Russia, we let rot. We stood by as every quality-of-life metric plummeted below 1991 levels, and an era of kleptocrats plundered the privatization process. Nobody was stewarding them into being anything more than a cheap source of unsophisticated raw materials. If they had enjoyed the same rehabilitation between 1991 and 2021 as Japan did between 1945 and 1975, do you think there'd be any political hay to be made from "we are standing against the Evil West and expansion of NATO and the EU?" No, they'd be queuing up to join in.
It's not like they didn't have the resources to kickstart that growth-- they had an educated population, non-destroyed infrastructure, and plenty of fairly sophisticated industry. Yeah, their microchips were 20 years behind the West, but that's still a pretty robust base to start with compared with plenty of other economic development opportunities.
I think if you're defending from a war of aggression, you might be able to flex now and then when things go alright and maybe even misspeak a few times and still avoid the judgment of history ;)
Who, do you think, made a more appropriate choice?
Imagine world where china-india-middle_east-russia military organization in 800 km from Washington destabilize region, training military, and doing all kinds of military activities. And US reacts, is it aggression or protection of sovereignty ?
The closest analogy would be the Communist Cuba and the crisis after the Soviets put nuclear weapons there. Cuba has not been annexed, or declared the core US land, though.
Here's a pretty good article on the topic: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/stop-tiptoeing-...
After 1991, the western aid to that you mention has been built free and stable societies in Eastern Europe, which has given Russia exceptional security at its borders. What "protection of sovereignty" are you talking about, from whom?
Due to the nature of either-you-are-with-us-or-against-us two-tribes conflict, public diplomacy has to be very Marmite. The Ukrainian side want to attract numerate people able to help them win the war. They don't care about what people outside their audience think because they get their news sources elsewhere.
I would be surprised if this tweet was considered noteworthy by political commentators that are prone to use the last letter of the alphabet in red white and blue stripes.
Russian officials spew genocidal garbage, stating Ukraine is not a nation, all need to be de-nazified. Russian soldiers murder, rape and execute in the occupied areas, routinely shell and bomb civilians. Torture and murder prisoners of war.
...but God forbid the Ukranians post a funny meme. The horror.
You encapsulate the reaction perfectly, which I have seen from Russians en-masse.