Seeing how the hashtag form of #IStandWithUkraine is mostly a pro-Ukrainian thing, I'm not surprised. Russians use other hashtags.
>The studies posts contained hashtags like “StandWithPutin”, “(I)StandWithRussia”, “(I)SupportRussia”, “(I)StandWithUkraine”, “(I)StandWithZelenskyy” and “(I)SupportUkraine”.
Having said that, I have the feeling that Russia has been surprisingly playing catch up on social media on this war. Ukraine groups has been posting 'from the trenches' combat videos almost from day one while it took a while to Russia to identify it as an useful propaganda source and they are still not as good as the Ukrainian.
To be honest this feels kinda effective, since Ukranians are not bothering in hiding the Nazi at all (most recent example: Zelensky made selfies near his bodyguards, and they were wearing concentration camp division tags on their uniforms...)
But when I talk to random people on street here in Brazil at least, it is more likely they believe in Ukranian propaganda than Russian propaganda just because they never heard of the Russian propaganda in first place.
Russian sources love to speak of the enemy in general as holder of a certain ideology. They also like to repeat that civilian casualties and destroyed buildings are unilaterally caused by the other side, mostly by bombing the places they retreat from.
The first claim is obviously wrong since Ukrainians are just defending themselves. I've only heard proof of the second from eyewitness testimonies, yet I've seen real footage of Russian tanks firing at 20-story buildings and hysterical volunteers taking turns at blasting RPGs in empty, silent streets.
Yeahhh, the bodyguard for the Jewish guy is a Nazi! (Note grayzone is HEAVILY russian biased.)
Fuck it, I'm jewish and I'd rather be interrogated by the Ukranians than the Russians any day: https://twitter.com/olex_scherba/status/1570779528196399104
https://twitter.com/sameralatrush/status/1365746097117921288...
I don't know if we can draw conclusions about racist leanings by backpack stickers that require so much familiarity with historical nazi logos that you can recognize one re-interpreted into a "generic tough guy" aesthetic. Maybe we can! But even if it's the case that there are simply a lot of racists in eastern europe, it's still true that one side is brutally invading a non-threatening neighboring democracy and committing war crimes on a daily basis.
The kind who fled to Israel and Turkey because they could not stay in a country that wages wars :)
Because sanctions affect their personal well-being. The war started at 2014 and they were OK with it for eight years.
In 2014 the West did some mild condemnations and so did Russian twitter crowd. In 2022 the West decided it's time to boot Russia and so they promptly left.
Many of them are returning now since they did not have means to stay there anymore (no job, no residency permit, no ways to draw sufficient money from Russia)