A lot of us have extremely extremely critical support for Russia for exactly one reason - Russia weakens US hegemony, and weakening US hegemony creates more spaces where revolutionary politics can be nurtured and grown. It’s not support for Russia, it’s support for the role Russia plays in breaking the US’s death grip on the world. I don’t think there’s anyone here who wouldn’t cheer if Putin “fell off a balcony” tomorrow. Russia is, as you said, a ruthlessly capitalist country just like America is, but America is too foolish and brutal to have accepted Russia in to the fold back in the 2000s, so now the war between the two nations is serving to bleed capitalism at a time when it is very vulnerable.

What we’re hoping for is a Multi-polar world; A world where US hegemony is broken and countries can realistically align themselves against US interests without being utterly destroyed. That wouldn’t be any kind of guarantee that Socialism could flourish and begin a new period of revolutions, but it gives us much better odds than a world where the US can reach almost anywhere to crush communist and anarchist movements that begin to gain power.

Right now, the primary actors pushing circumstances towards multi-polarity are Russia, China, Iran, India, Brazil, and a few others. Russia is a capitalist state, and our enemy. China is weird and complicated and sometimes does good things, sometimes does bad things, often does nothing at times when something really needs to be done and they’re the only ones who can. Iran, obviously, is no friend to communists despite being an occasional ally due to shared interests, as in the Levant. India is totally fucked, with Hindutva fascists in control and things getting worse, but they’re still part of the equation. And Brazil is doing it’s thing with Lula and Bolsonaro, and it seems like everything is up in the air, there. But they’ve got the economic juice to be very important.

This is hard-core, cold-blooded realpolitik that is entirely about goals instead of ideals. It’s doing what we can with the situation that exists, acknowledging that this is very much not what we want. And, of course, everyone here is mostly an observer to the horror, doing what we can at the local level where we can actually operate while we wait to see what happens with the struggle between the great powers.

If you’d like to know more you can go ask in the News Mega. The folks who hang out there are terminally online politics junkies and can explain better than I can. Just make it very clear that you’re asking in good faith and will seriously engage with the answers you’re given, whether you agree with them or not. We get a ton of bad-faith trolling, so people can be touchy about it.