I once went through my stance on this issue and got a very sincere response that what I said "sounds like Kremlin talking points." I asked the person if they've ever actually listened to or read a translation of what the Kremlin says beyond the extremely clipped paraphrasings on NPR and such, and they said no. It's impressive that they could recognize the sound of something they had never heard.

Fortunately for me, I have actually read and listened to speeches by Putin, and could explain to them some of what Russia says regarding Ukraine and the US and the degree to which I think they are correct or incorrect (e.g. Putin does like using revanchist rhetoric and I deeply despise that, and we don't need to talk about his social views).

Anyway, I think the place to start with such people if you're going to talk to them again is to say that reactionaries can and do opportunistically tell the truth. If you're speaking to an American, ou can use any number of things they'd probably be familiar with from Presidential campaigns in the US, where Republican called Biden a senile old fool and they were completely right (but were not speaking from any sort of principled objection). Reactionaries have platforms based on lies that require them to lie a lot, but that doesn't mean that they are devils who are forced to speak only in lies.

So like when Putin says he wants to get rid of Ukro-Nazis, he is almost certainly telling the truth. He doesn't have any problem with fascists, but in Ukraine overwhelmingly the most dedicated enemies of Russia are going to be the hardline nationalists, including the Banderites. That doesn't mean he has any interest in stopping Russo-Nazis, though clearly he also can find them to be a problem for political reasons, from Navalny to Wagner (eventually, after far too long).

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