To an independent filmmaker in Hanoi, President Vladimir Putin of Russia is a "wise leader.” In Rio de Janeiro, a former restaurant owner said he was convinced that Ukraine had hired actors to fake war injuries. And a 27-year-old doctor living near Nairobi questioned how Americans could be outraged over the Russian invasion when "for so long, they had a monopoly over anarchy.”
Most of the world has loudly and unequivocally condemned Putin for sparking a war with Ukraine. But in countries where governments have remained neutral, tacitly supported Russia or encouraged the dissemination of false or sanitized accounts of the war, citizens are voicing a much more complicated and forgiving narrative of Putin’s invasion.
Interviews with dozens of people in those countries — from Vietnam to Afghanistan to South Africa to China — reveal that while many are disturbed by the war and the loss of innocent lives, some are sympathetic to Russia’s justifications for its invasion of Ukraine, and do not accept the good versus evil scenario presented by the United States and Europe.