I'm not arguing that Russia didn't commit war crimes. I'm arguing that the perception of Western racism and hypocrisy is real, and that they enabled far worse crimes to be committed by Israel.

Here's a few key quotes from FT's article:

“What we said about Ukraine has to apply to Gaza. Otherwise we lose all our credibility,” the senior G7 diplomat added. “The Brazilians, the South Africans, the Indonesians: why should they ever believe what we say about human rights?”

Just four weeks before the Hamas assault on Israel, leaders from the US, EU and western allies attended the G20 summit in New Delhi and asked developing nations to condemn Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian civilians in order to uphold respect for the UN charter and international law.

Since last Sunday, many of those officials told the Financial Times they have had the same argument read back at them in demands for condemnation of Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza, and of its decision to restrict water, electricity and gas supplies there.

Arab states, particularly Jordan and Egypt, have pressed western officials to harden their tone on protecting Gaza’s civilians. “If you describe cutting off water, food and electricity in Ukraine as a war crime, then you should say the same thing about Gaza,” said one Arab official.

“What New Delhi, Jakarta and Brasília want to see is a common position on these issues, and consistency. And if they don’t see that . . . then on the major global issues there’s a certain danger EU, G7, Nato will not be taken seriously,” said Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, former Nato secretary-general.

https://archive.ph/TxkRb

When you have politicians like Baerbock saying that civilians in Gaza are fair targets, anything Russia does pales by comparison. To the rest of the world, Russia is guilty of war crimes and the West is guilty of war crimes, and so they will trade and deal with whoever. Russia isn't any worse, in fact it is seen by many as a lesser-evil regardless of how you as a Westerner feel about it.