Hi clo.
They aren't troubled by sentiment.
For both Russia and China, the state is an organism separate from its people. They pursue their national interests regardless of the dispositions of the governments with whom they are allied. The state operates from the top-down. It is entitled to do what it wishes to further its aims, including harming its own people in the interests of what they think of as stability.
For Western countries, theoretically at least, the state is the sum of the interests of its people. When we see barbarism, it is an affront to our idea of what government is for. Our governments are intrinsically bottom-up affairs and we are appalled when some interest intrudes to interfere with that. We embrace the idea of change as intrinsic to the structure of progress.
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