I'm afraid Russia will eventually come to regret its Ukraine neo-Nazi state narrative. The West has been engaging in historical revisionism to downplay USSR's role in WWII. Cynical use of anti-Nazi narrative to justify the present war in Ukraine can only damage Russian credibility. And equivalating Japanese support for Ukraine with Japanese alliance with Nazi Germany will only play into the hands of apologists of Japanese militarism.
Cynically speaking, it's about semi-religions.
Everyone West doesn't like is automatically "autocratic". Everyone in the west is democratic&liberal(even those Balcan countries with their 20+ year "presidents"), everyone Western world likes is at least moving in the right direction.
At this point, liberalism is kinda...a religion. Most of its proponents can't even properly formulate it in a discussion, they just push for it.
Anti-nazi stance is the same - sorta modern religion in Russia. Everyone against Russia is probably either a nazi, or is supportive of them. There is indeed some basis for it - b/c all countries around Russia(former parts of RI/SU) have large Russian minorities, almost all of them have lots of nationalists who despise this past, and some of those have very little statehood history - i.e. the only way they can begin their national myth is by being anti-russian. But that's the trap - on the one hand, since they're against Russia, they immediately become democratic and liberal. On the other hand, aggressive nationalism has another name, and everyone in the western world was taught that nazism is something really bad.
So both religions work.
Anti-nazism religion works worse, though because events from 80 years ago don't really ring the bell for most modern people. They never saw nor experienced
themselves why it is bad. Furthermore, unlike the former SU, where literally every family has family memory from grandparents about that nazis are about - for most of Europe it isn't true...or they have brighter and more recent experiences (Balkan countries, and now - Ukraine).
Just for example - it's the same with Japan - most of the world either don't know anything, or only
heard that Japan actually did something bad in the past. It isn't like, say, China, where this "bad" isn't
just taught, is a family history for many.
Many heard of it from their grandparents. Grandparents who saw it (or worse) with their own eyes.
Democratic-liberal one, on the other hand, is associated with really rich countries where it's good to live, and it is good to live there
here and now. That's a powerful message.
Because everyone is sure being with the west will allow them to become another, don't know, Netherlands - certainly not another Bosnia or Romania (nothing personal to those two beautiful countries). Or, at very least, won't limit migration opportunities.
