You seem to be running around with some serioulsy lack of life experience and understanding of people plus are probably subconsciously influenced by exposure to American-style hyperreductive politics (i.e. namelly the Red Scare bollocks) so let me tell you a story:

• I’m a member a small leftwing party in my country. Now, this country used to be under a Fascist dictatorship and had a Revolution which overthrew it about 50 years ago. The result of this is that some older people who fought against Fascism and were deeply involved in Politics during the Revolution are pretty hard-core leftwingers in older more traditional ways.

Now this party I’m in isn’t the Communist Party (yeah, my country has one), differing mainly because it’s against autoritarian approaches to improving people’s lives. That said, a number of members there are from the old generation, who grew up under Fascism with one or other variant of Communism as the lighthouse signalling their way to a better world.

Back when Russia invaded Ukraine, I was having a conversation with some “comrades” from the party (yeah, even though not being the Communist Party, the party I’m in has inherited a lot of elements from the anti-Fascism revolutionary origins of its founding members, and that includes that other party members are “comrades”) and one of the older ones immediatelly sided with Russia.

Now, I happen to understand were he’s coming from (and this is what YOU CLEARLY DO NOT UNDERSTAND AND JUDGING BY YOUR SIMPLETON JUDGEMENTALISM, DO NOT EVEN TRY) - his political birth was under a Fascist dictatorship, were the by far loudest political messaging for change and the main light illuminating the path out was the Soviet Union’s variant of Communism - most people rotting in the Fascist political prisons were Communists - so of course his instinctive reaction was to think “Russia must be doing this for a good reason” and side with them: that’s just tribalist fanboyism talking (and in my experience the one thing Soviet and Mao’s styles of Communism do well is turning people into unthinking tribalist fanboys, something which people like the OP with their blunt adversarial approach actually help).

Guess what: I actually talked with him about it, pointed out this was a very big nation invading the territory of a smaller nation, one which they couldn’t possibly fear because it was so much smaller - a clear aggressor and victim situation - and that I was on the side of the victim and against the aggressor, just like when the US invaded Iraq I was against the US and on the side of Iraq (and that, my older generation comrade shared) due to exactly the same Principle.

THAT got him thinking and him thinking got him to change his mind about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and side with Ukraine instead of Russia.

So, you see, not all tankies are alike and there are a whole lot of reasons why people end up with those beliefs, and doing like the OP did and just poking them like a little child and running back to your friends boasting about having poked them and how angry they got ain’t gonna change the ones who can change.