You got out. You made your decision. You were able to decide to begin with. A lot of people don't have that option, and that means someone is making decisions for them. I'm not saying that's a good thing.

But AGAIN, democracy is not a tenable ideal in wartime.

It is a peacetime luxury, often flawed in implementation even then. Frequently too far away from a meritocracy to function efficiently.

You keep bringing it up as if there's some kind of hypocrisy happening, because you see "democratic" people supporting dictatorship.

But decisionmaking during wartime isn't something you can just "call a vote" on. Democracy doesn't work under siege. That's the whole reason basically every democratic government has the alternate operating mode of martial law, complete with legal systems written up a ready to go.

By personal perspective, I mean exactly that which you are talking about. You, what your situation would be like if you were still there, what it is like right now for the people you care about personally.

Like I said, I would probably trade in my country for those same people, too.

But I'm not sure I could live with it. I care about other things, many of which being a subject of the current Russian state would make it dangerous for me to care about.