There has never been an "unprovoked aggression against Yugoslavia". More than 130K people were killed and 4 million displaced (mainly by Serb troops) and people begged for an intervention, which came to late (think about Sarajevo, Srebrenica).
What they actually see is a despondent and divided West with no stomach for a fight, ripe to gleefully exploit open values and norms for their own gain.
It's clear from the last decade or so that there is much to gain from portraying oneself as a victim, to appeal to supposed liberal values, all to mask what is really a commitment to naked Realism and
Tribalism, the true principle that consistently binds the "global south" together. They do not care for colonialism, oppression or "bullying", it's only wrong that it should happen to them. Otherwise they're quite glad to brutally suppress their own internal separatist movements or opposition. That is what the "average" person thinks.
You can convince a few useful idiots in universities to act against their own interests, but people elsewhere aren't stupid to see what one's intentions really are.
Don't you think there's a chance that that narrative of "murderous autocrats" was manufactured post hoc to rationalize NATO's aggression?
Otherwise it's a mighty coincidence that the West only "intervenes" in places that are simultaneously relevant to Western geopolitical-economic interests and just happen to have a "murderous autocrat" begging to be toppled.
So convenient that the bloc which dominates the global media landscape is always narratively-justified in its murder campaigns. Nothing fishy there!
> they see a complicated proxy war where the bigger bully is forcing an institutionally-weak nation to degrade or destroy an enemy state
This is so, so ridiculous take of the war that I refuse to believe there are any significant number of people outside of Russia believing this. NATO/US is forcing Russia to destroy Ukraine, really now? They really are forced to wage an expansionist, genocidal war against a small neighbour?
