The tankie unifying ideology is something closer to “everything that is anti-US is good” rather than a coherent narrative about something that actually unifies historical or current communist dictatorships. So there tends to be a fair amount of Russian simping or Russia/US both-sides equivocation.

Dude. Who knows? They don't make the slightest amount of sense. Tanky is more just anti-west than anything meaningful now. They're braindead.

It's pure tribalism at that level, nothing to do with logic or even principles.

In that specific tribe Russia = Good, US = Bad, always and with no case-by-case analysis.

(Mind you, I did once turned a tankie away from that by pointing out that Russia's Invasion of Ukraine was the same kind of thing as the US' second invasion of Iraq so it made sense to judge the invaders in both exactly in the same way. Granted this was back in the early days of the invasion and I reckon that anybody who still remains pro-Russia now is either an authoritarian at hearth or a brainless unprincipled parrot).