> They'd been widely criticized for their new homophobic laws well before the Ukraine crisis.

I'm not so sure about that.

> Also, the US torturing people doesn't make other atrocities okay. I keep hearing countries and their fanboys say "yeah, but that other country also does bad things", or "but China is even worse!" Yeah, but that doesn't mean it's okay for your country to do the same.

I'm equally against all "countries" (=governments, in practice). You may have noticed they all do bad things, either currently or eventually.