Those people bear a level of responsibility. Their choices might be terrible, but until they collectively choose not to allow the tyranny to continue, they are

Those people bear a level of responsibility. Their choices might be terrible, but until they collectively choose not to allow the tyranny to continue, they are appeasing and enabling their oppressors. Freedom has a vast and terrible price, and Russia might be paying it right now. The trouble is nukes. Achieving freedom through bloody revolution was possible before the 50's, but Russia and China may no longer have that choice available. I have a deep sympathy for the people just trying to live the best life they can, and to get their family through some dark situations. Don't overvalue the notion of goodness. Good Germans wreaked havoc on the world during WWII. Corruption and control over information gives tyrants power to manipulate good people. There were nazis that were good and decent and heroic human beings, who only fought for the men next to them in the trenches. They still had to be put down - there was no other way to correct their terrible decision to support the Nazis. Only after Germany was defeated did its people have the opportunity to revise their way of doing things, to ensure that it could never happen to them again. The internet makes the manipulation of "good" people easier, which tyrants around the world are abusing to great effect. Nuclear weapons means the tyrants and dictators have a literal death grip on their populations. If everyone in Russia wants freedom to decide their destiny as a country, but Putin says otherwise, they have to make soul crushing choices. Collaborate or risk destruction. If there is any people on the planet I would ascribe the ability to make hard choices and live through the consequences, I would say it's the Russians. Good Russians keep getting horribly unlucky with their governments, and keep making horribly unwise decisions when they get a chance to change things. Unless Putin has a nuclear trigger rigged to his death, I hope Russians murder the shit out of him and take back their lives and country. No death could be too painful.