Recently I have noticed that several posts in major newspapers (Chinese, German, Japanese, UK, US) have comments written by people with VERY-American or British or German etc. names. At least their accounts look as if they were natives of these countries. Usually these comment-writers pose as man around 40 or 50, who are confident, obviously well informed and in-the-know. They bash what reliable news agencies and independent writers say, and push very forcefully a narrative heavily leaning towards Russia and/or China. In these narratives the US and the EU are always the bad guys, who treat poor Russia and China badly, and are unfair, and start wars everywhere (or finance the wars and make a good buck on them). According to these narratives all these wars started were totally unnecessary and self-serving, and Russia and China are peaceful giants, who would never do the same.
Of course this is total rubbish. It is total rubbish not because the US and the EU are not involved in arms trading or they don't start/finance/participate in wars. But it is total rubbish because the motivations for going to wars are usually a lot more complicated than simply aiming at monetary and territorial gains. And it is also total rubbish because many of these wars are about countering aggressive push by Chinese and Russian armed forces, secret services, or military units.
It is enough to think of the Ukraine: the EU did offer the Ukraine the chance to start the process to become a member state. But it did not attack Russia nor did it threaten it with that. Nor did it occupy the Ukraine. The then-Prime Minister of Ukraine was not forced to agree to this; it was Russia who twisted his arm to back out of the deal. It is easy to see who was the aggressor here, and then Russia aggravated things by pushing into the Ukraine by military force.
Consider also North-Korea, who have pushed the speed of their military missiles development programmes up to maximum. This has taken both South-Korea and Japan by surprise, and both states need to quickly up their defenses. They are at the same time constrained from doing so by contracts enforced on them by the US, and by the aggressive diplomacy of China. China thinks all military development is justified for them, while their neighbours should just sit with their hands crossed in their laps. Whereas any sane country that is the neighbour of a superpower needs a normal, up-to date military. This need is now made even more stringent and urgent by North-Korea's recently upgraded striking capabilities. Now, North-Korea has surely not achieved these striking technological breakthroughs suddenly on its own merit. Either China and/or Russia had to finance and probably support their projects with money, technology and expertise.
Add to this Russia's role in Syria, where it first vetoed all attempts at intervention, letting several millions civilians become displaced, and tens of thousands get killed, only so that its strongman ally leader can stay in power. Then when interventions begone Russia entered into contracts with the US and allies, but refused to stick to those contracts and bombed civilians and those it was supposed to support.
At the same time China is trying to gobble down the whole South-China sea, unilaterally. This incorporates waters well in the economic interests zones and reasonably assigned self-defense zones of several other countries. China is also building up artificial military islands in the region. Surely not the most peaceful move.
In light of all this, it is easy to see that the narratives of the apologists don't add up. It is also well known that there are plenty of government sponsored trolls spreading such news. The funny bit is when one gets into a debate with them and assumes a reasonable, true-to-the-facts-but-open-to-new-evidence approach they take off. They don't stay and engage in substantial debates and conversations. They are only interested in swaying the opinions of people who are dumb enough to think of politics in terms of Good and Bad, and who are willing to force this two dimensional straight-jacket view on current affairs and cast the US or Europe in the role of evil perpetrator.
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