We should not make life hard for individual Russians. Not at all. But collectively, Putin is a product of the Russian society. Many ordinary Russians buy into Putin's "Make Russia Great Again" program. I don't think the Russian people, again, collectively, can claim perfect innocence on all the evil things Putin has done.
The way I look at it, there's probably a bunch of different groups...
Probably a very large number of Russians who know that something is terribly rotten with their government, but keeping their heads down because they don't feel they can do much about it and there's extreme coercion going on (years in prison for demonstrating, no real independent justice system to protect people form state power, etc).
There's probably another large group -- especially older Russians -- who get all their news from state-controlled TV and don't really interact with the rest of the world even when the internet was more open, they live in an alternate reality and think they're the good guys. That spell may be very hard to break even if you can get more accurate info in, but it's still a result of info-control more than from legitimate support for Putin.
If Putin was actually very popular for what he does, he wouldn't need all the insane alternate reality propaganda and to have fake elections without opponents.
And there's probably a group that knows what is going on but truly support Putin for various reasons, including because they're part of the groups that share the spoils of war & corruption in Russia.
In any case, I think the sanctions on the country need to stay and be ratcheted up, because it's the only way to hurt Putin and his war machine, to make his keys to power (no man rules alone) start to wonder if they wouldn't be better without him, and to make the population realize that Putin is terrible for their country.
My point is just to make it very clear that it's his fault, and that without him, Russia can be welcomed back to the world just like Germany and Japan were after WWII. And not to assume that Russians outside or Russia support Putin.
We should not make life hard for individual Russians. Not at all. But collectively, Putin is a product of the Russian society. Many ordinary Russians buy into Putin's "Make Russia Great Again" program. I don't think the Russian people, again, collectively, can claim perfect innocence on all the evil things Putin has done.
The way I look at it, there's probably a bunch of different groups...
Probably a very large number of Russians who know that something is terribly rotten with their government, but keeping their heads down because they don't feel they can do much about it and there's extreme coercion going on (years in prison for demonstrating, no real independent justice system to protect people form state power, etc).
There's probably another large group -- especially older Russians -- who get all their news from state-controlled TV and don't really interact with the rest of the world even when the internet was more open, they live in an alternate reality and think they're the good guys. That spell may be very hard to break even if you can get more accurate info in, but it's still a result of info-control more than from legitimate support for Putin.
If Putin was actually very popular for what he does, he wouldn't need all the insane alternate reality propaganda and to have fake elections without opponents.
And there's probably a group that knows what is going on but truly support Putin for various reasons, including because they're part of the groups that share the spoils of war & corruption in Russia.
In any case, I think the sanctions on the country need to stay and be ratcheted up, because it's the only way to hurt Putin and his war machine, to make his keys to power (no man rules alone) start to wonder if they wouldn't be better without him, and to make the population realize that Putin is terrible for their country.
My point is just to make it very clear that it's his fault, and that without him, Russia can be welcomed back to the world just like Germany and Japan were after WWII. And not to assume that Russians outside or Russia support Putin.
See this thread for examples:
https://twitter.com/Billbrowder/status/1503069835072352270
If I saw this AND believed it, I'd also think what they think. Problem is, it's false.
"If I do the former, he refuses, to show that he’s a big boy and independent.
If I do the latter, he accepts, to show that he’s a big boy and can help take care of me, making him really proud."
Love this!
Funny, this little intro bit is one of the things I've got the most emails/DMs/comments about.
Clearly a bunch of parents out there dealing with similar psychological dynamics.
Cheers Kevin! 💚 🥃