Countries joining NATO to get protection from Russia, or the EU, to get trade deals, is not remotely the same as Russia invading Ukraine in bloody war. Or any of the murderous shit Putin has done.
The person you’re arguing-against has a valid point…
& that is just 1 source I was able to find in mere-seconds, as this issue has had entire books written on it.
BOTH sides commit imperialist narcissist machiavellian psychopathic nihilistic sadistic shit, while gaslighting the entire-world about it.
The difference is a difference of degree, not a “1 does it, the other doesn’t do it” difference,
& that has been true for … the last 8+ decades?
This is actually a fundamental problem with “politics”:
IF a particular machiavellian-operation is established,
AND a “new government” is elected,
Do you try resetting everything, in order to align with the temporarily-in-power new-electorate?
XOR do you just keep everything underhanded going as S.O.P, while letting the “politicians” play in the polls?
( this is intentionally a false-dichotomy: the right-answer is somewhere between, & keeps dynamically changing, as the country’s morality devolves/evolves )
Without periodic-review, there won’t ever be any accountability, & evil can just continue growing, endlessly, until the “deep state” really is the primary enemy of the country’s civil-rights…
With periodic-review, however, then … done by whom?
when?
At what intervals?
With what authority?
etc.
Therefore, the default is for evil to just continue growing…
As a collector-of-knowledge told me, years ago, the more he understood what had actually happened in the US molesting Nicaragua, via the CIA, & drug-cartels, etc…
the more he couldn’t figure-out who the bad-guys were supposed to be.
That is normal.
Spook stuff does everything it can to eradicate true-good & true-evil from all frames-of-reference!
that is by-design.
which is what makes it & some-people so … utterly-incompatible.
_ /\ _
Frankly if someone supports Russia over the West, or “both sides” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, I count them as either a Russia troll farm or a tankie.
The West does bad thing, but often with some misplaced good motives. It doesn’t do things like:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_Skripal
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvinenko
Perhaps you consider Israel to be not part of the West?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01N7LQ2NR/
Or perhaps you consider the US to not be part of the West?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassinations_by_the_United_States
I’ve read that the CIA’s “heart-attack gun”, which shoots a frozen needle ( so it dissolves, leaving no “piece” to find ) of poison, explains a plague of heart-attacks among biomedical researchers, some years ago ( including those who refused to play any spook-games for anybody? either you’re working with us or you die? )
NONE of our countries is “clean”, is my point.
Some are more overtly evil, than others, is all…