Yes

The amount of people who equate brexit to the UK leaving Europe and not the EU is ridiculous

Europe is nothing other than a geographical location, western Russia is also in "Europe", but surely you can see how this is not the same as the US, which is not a geographical location but a specific political entity?

People obviously don't judge Venezuela for what the US does and vice versa, so why include the UK in discourse about EU?

Iirc I assumed you simply used Europe as short-hand for EU, kind of like saying America but you really mean the US, because otherwise the comment makes no sense at all.