This is a fairly comprehensive examination of what drives leftists to support Vladimir Putin, his neo imperialist program for Russia and his war in Ukraine: Spoiler alert: Ideology and money.
An excerpt:
Anti-Americanism is a set of beliefs that classifies imperialism as a singular specific American rather than global phenomenon and discounts or ignores competition between imperialists and intra-capitalist rivalries. Anti-Americanism bears little relation to Lenin's concept of many rival imperialist ruling classes divided within and engaged in an unending struggle with one another. Instead, anti-Americanists restrict “imperialism” to a single US dominated bloc without fundamental intra-ruling-class differences.
Such a perspective leads some leftists and liberals to see the world as a stage for a duel between a capitalist USA and NATO on one side, and capitalist Russia on the other. On this Manichean stage, Ukraine must remain Russian, so the US and NATO do not get stronger. Middle or working class Ukrainians who see benefit in the EU, the massive support for the Maidan and the prospect of support from Ukrainian leftists and liberals in the fight against neo liberal capitalism within the EU have no place on this stage. According to this script, those who support EU membership for Ukraine are dupes in a fascist plot, run by the USA and NATO and its new puppet Kyiv “junta” government. Ukrainian national ambitions and independence are synonymous with what these leftists, liberals and Russian rulers call fascism. The fact that EU negotiators and Maidan leaders were urging Yanukovych to remain in power and that he fled of his own volition is ignored. Appalled at the prospect of Anglo- American corporations making money from Ukrainian misery, as they are appalled at how they continue to extract resources from former European colonies, pro-Kremlin leftists and liberals are not appalled by the prospect of the Russian state and its ruling elite continuing to extract resources from its Ukrainian colony – as they have been doing since the 18th century.
The groups here examined include people like Paul Craig Roberts, John Pilger, Oliver Stone, John Helmer, Thomas Hartmann, and Anatol Lieven, who echo the Kremlin’s anti-Ukrainian propaganda on websites like Counterpunch.org, Marxist.com, Greenleft.org, World Socialist Website, Naked Capitalism, Stopimperialism.com, Canadian Dimension, and Globalresearch.ca. Few of these sites list who finances them. How many are funded by the Kremlin, is unknown. These leftists and liberals, contrary to their avowed principles of anti-imperialism and self-determination, pen pro-Kremlin articles that identify the new conservative Ukrainian government containing Russians and Jews and Georgians and Lithuanians, as a fascist “regime” exploiting Russians and “invading” eastern Ukraine – not explaining how a government can invade its own territory and ignoring the Russian troops fighting on Ukrainian territory. These people consider Ukraine in Russia’s “sphere of influence” and that it should stay there. The fact that a majority of Ukrainian citizens prefer not to stay there, and that Russia’s drive for regional hegemony risks starting World War III by breaking international treaties and invading their country, is not considered by any of the Flashpoint authors.
Much more at the link