Though I don’t doubt many do, it’s important to remember that it’s more or less illegal to not support the war. Not an excuse, but a reason.
It's the reason why some russians (not that many) have left the country and some (very few) tried protesting.
After three years of war, though, those joining the army, those working in factories producing shahed drones or other weapons, those supporting the army indirectly, they actually support the war.
Yes, it's all the result of propaganda, but they do believe the official line, they do think that they're trying to liberate.
So while it's illegal to be against war there, very few are breaking that even in their heads. And when we hear "x% of ruzzians want peace", it only means that they want the victory rather sooner, because their life is somewhat uncomfortable.
I guess this song is still relevant then: Super Good · Сергей Шнуров
An overwhelming majority of russians are committed to imperialism. A strong majority are committed to genocidal imperialism.
This has nothing to do with not supporting the war being illegal. A tiny minority within a minority actually opposes imperialism. Even so called "russian liberals" generally support the annexation of Crimea and are committed to the extermination of occupied nations' culture and language.
This is all cross validated by multiple research approaches (both quantitative and qualitative), across multiple sources, with time series analysis and so on.
Most Westerners have their reasons for avoiding the truth about the vast majority of russians.
Oh, I’m well aware, but I also do my best to avoid sweeping generalizations. I do agree that Russian society and culture on that front is… shall we say, deeply problematic.
It's not a sweeping generalization. It's reality.
The common (mis)use of generalizations does not preclude the possibility of a society being overwhelmingly (80%+ after adjustments for preference falsification) committed to imperialism.
Fair point; I tend to be overly cautious when using that broad of a brush, but I don’t disagree
True but there is a difference between not speaking out cause its illegal and actively promoting it online constantly. A large amount of russians want everyone but them dead and subjugated.
Even genuine anti-war Russians have some hard cognitive dissonances when asked about all the small peoples of Russia, whose cultures and languages are about to be extinct because any display of your ethnic identity is labeled as "nationalism" and they're just slowly getting erased.
Not to mention the Crimea question. Make it make sense, that "nazi Ukraine" had TV channels broadcasting in Crimean Tathar language, while Russia doesn't.
And there's a state propaganda ecosystem making the war look normal and okay, and most people just aren't that into politics.
Civilians are civilians. Sometimes they're dumb, but we're still not supposed to demonise them.
...and Germany's spy chief knows this, so I'm wondering where this article comes from.
When you control the media telling everyone what to think, it's not much of a surprise is it? Hitler did it, Putin did it, Trump is trying his damnedest and is mostly there...
I know what you are getting at and to an extent you aren't wrong but Russians definitely have access to foreign information. They also have a tendency to find state propaganda laughably easy to spot (according to the Russians I have spoken with). They support the war because it benefits them IMO
Oh sure, the same goes for everywhere else as well... but being blasted with propaganda 24/7 is a huge problem for the majority of people all over the world. Just like we all know about fox news, but if they had treated trump like they did the democrats, trump would have had a much harder battle to fight.
This is false.
There are sociological approaches to test for this and the results are damning for russian society; a strong majority of them (~65%) are open supporters of genocidal imperialism. Another 20% (for a total of ~85%) are supporters of imperialism without open support for genocide.
These are preference falsification (i.e. lying in a poll because you don't want to reveal your true views) adjusted numbers, the nominal numbers are even higher.
For many of them it’s still far away. But I note the ukrainian counter of russian casualties is about to pass a million. While there is 'fog of war' it's easier to say people are missing, so friends and relatives can keep hoping that theirs is the special case. During any prolonged ceasefire, it would become clearer who's gone forever - which is one reason why P avoids this situation (and also bans NGOs like soldier's mothers, who used to help connect these dots).
The vast majority of russians don't care about the deaths of their family members or the deaths of other russians.
Putin banning NGOs has nothing to do with this. All sorts of NGOs are banned. Any corporate entity that doesn't cooperate with regime are also banned.
Now do Israel :)
Do they support Putin too?
No but they overwhelmingly support their own violent genocidal government. I guess there already are enough polls that prove that tho.
They definitely do not support Ukraine. Also it's pretty damn obvious @[email protected] was refering to the genocide being conducted by Israel and its allies, not Putin.
When a westerner sees something confirming the statement "Russian supports Putin", in the absolute majority of cases he just doesn't like the actual meaning of that something.
See, other that "supporting Putin" and "following the narrative of nations which had 20 years of development conditioned by guaranteed cheap Russian resource deals, backed by corruption and closing their eyes on the legality of the regime", of course you'll find very few very stupid Russians believing the latter.
It doesn't mean they are part of the former.
This is a victim-hood narrative.
Russians are responsible for the actions of their government, no one else. 2000 and 2004 elections were considered more or less fair.
Not worth an answer.
Go fuck yourself.
Treating russians like adults is not worth an answer. In a sense, you prove my point much better than I could have.
There is an nice irony to this! Cheers!
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