If there is a dictator in your country you have some moral duty to find out at least a bit about the truth.

How do I know?

I’m German.

Last time I heard, your government openly supported the genocidal state of Israel.

Also I'd say many Russians in 1996 wouldn't expect a war on Ukraine.

My grandparent’s generation was the one that actively closed their eyes, that actively looked away, that everything that happend was someone else’s problem. They were the Generation that arranged themselves, that did good business as long as it wasn’t them that were deported, killed or fought at in the war.

See, somewhere around the year I was born (1996) in Russia it became a social consensus that something is wrong and that these new "democrats" are not in fact democratic in any way, and that they also commit enormous crimes. In 1993 it kinda slipped, because the parliament opposed to Yeltsin had an unhealthy concentration of Communists, neo-Nazis, bandits and hybrids of them.

And, well, then the society with that consensus learned that "the civilized world" considers legitimate the people with whom it does business. No exceptions for authoritarianism or genocide.

There were widespread protests, you know? It was common to treat the Russian government like shit since then and till early 00s too, on TV and in private conversations and so on. But that government endured the storm, and somehow by that time the most important figures not associated with it were dead.

This didn't happen the same way as it did in Germany where people looked the other way because they were generally fine with everything Nazi. This happened because people got tired of looking the right way. It's apathy, not hypocrisy.