I’m not the one you were talking to, but I think most Hexbears would prefer to see a negotiated settlement of some kind that brought an end to the war, one that also stopped the killing of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine that has been ongoing since 2014, and precluded Ukraine joining NATO (because Ukraine joining would complete NATO’s encirclement of Russia, something that Russia has been seeking to prevent for decades now, and which would dramatically increase nuclear tensions). I don’t think any Hexbears actually like Putin at all, and even “endorse” is an awfully strong word. And certainly no one thinks Putin’s Russia is going to institute communism. We just oppose the Western party line on the war, which gets us cast as pro-Russia (due to black-and-white thinking) when we’re totally not.

The standard Western position, by contrast, comes across to us as bloodthirsty, calling as it does for an extended conflict which will indefinitely prolong the suffering of the Ukrainian people. The West seems eager to spend Ukrainian lives for the sake of suppressing a geopolitical rival, not for humanitarian reasons but for economic ones, and so we stand against that.