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We are afraid Putin will use nuclear weapons. We don't like that he came from a KGB background and that he seems to be friends with mafia. And that he likes t

We are afraid Putin will use nuclear weapons. We don't like that he came from a KGB background and that he seems to be friends with mafia. And that he likes to assassinate his rivals. If the Russian people are so much against Putin and on the side of the West, then why not arrange them to all leave their apartments at the same time, to walk into their central squares, and to start shaking their keys -- as the Czechs did.

jacquesm 5y ago
Fair chance it would turn into a bloodbath. Better would a national strike. Equally difficult to organize but much harder to attack.
- formvoltron 5y ago
  I'm talking about ALL the people that are against Putin. Which if this guy is to be believed is most of the people. They are not going to kill most of their own people. A million people marching in Moscow would change minds.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    I agree it would change minds. And at the same time I'm pretty sure it would end in a bloodbath. Passive resistance against a dictatorship is a lot safer than active resistance. Of course the latter sends a more powerful message but it makes it obvious who to target, when and where and the reflexive response will be to lash out. Still, there is safety in numbers so maybe it would work. But I would not immediately bet on it, otoh simply crippling the Russian economy further could be achieved by inaction.
    - formvoltron 5y ago
      There are already young people brave enough to protest with just 2000 people protesting. I'm talking about a million people standing outside and walking towards the Red Square, shaking their keys. If Russians cannot manage this, then I do not have sympathy whatsoever.
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        Those people are especially brave because the numbers are so low. But they are being made an example out of and that will have a chilling effect on whoever might have followed them. > If Russians cannot manage this, then I do not have sympathy whatsoever. If you haven't seen this firsthand, then I understand. But I have seen it firsthand. Here is how it went: in the 80's, when solidarity was rising up in Poland a relatively small minority drove the revolution, and found support in a large chunk of the younger generation and some in older people as well. But the bulk of the Poles had seen it all before. Small uprisings that were brutally smacked down, with the local secret police making lists of people to raise from their beds in the inevitable crackdown. So they were advising their kids not to go to the Solidarity rallies, not to protest and so on. In some families this led to harsh words, and some families never really recovered. Because that one time those kids and the people behind Solidarity were right, they prevailed. They managed to achieve critical mass. They showed that you too could be brave and on the right side of history, and live to tell the tale. And eventually, after the wall fell of course all those other people suffered from memory loss and they too had been present at probably every demonstration, instead of sitting quaking in their house about the kind of terrible thing those idiot youngsters were bringing down on their houses. But make no mistake: for all the same money the army would have opened fire on the protests. It wasn't a 'done deal' until it was and it could have very easily gone the other way, as it had so many times before. And note that it was tried: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacification_of_Wujek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacification_of_Wujek (I really don't like the title of that article) and even if you may see the death toll as 'acceptable' the fact is that those people died and if the same thing had happened in for instance Gdansk the death toll would have been a very large multiple of that. It may not have been enough to break the back of Solidarity, but that's not something we will ever know for sure. If you've seen the kind of bravery in Russia in the last couple of years, regarding the murders of journalists, the jailing of opposition politicians and so on then you really have to keep a little bit of room for the cowards that were right every time so far, and who can not with all their fantasy see a million people march on the Kremlin. And by not being able to see it they indeed make it less likely. If it happens it should be massive. 2000 people will get arrested, a substantial multiple of that might get shot, and we're nowhere near the point where a million people would mobilize. But if and when they do, there will be a lot of blood flowing and at the end of it Putin will be gone. But they'd better bring something more potent than just their housekeys.
  - Yajirobe 5y ago
    > A million people marching in Moscow would change minds. How? What would they do? They would march and riot and protest and then after a day or two they would go home. Meanwhile the politicians will just wait it out and the show will go on (see Belarus).
    - drakonka 5y ago
      Why would you assume that? (See Euromaidan)
      - utrack 5y ago
        Compare the total area of Ukraine and Russia - and max distance between the border and the capital city.
      - 331c8c71 5y ago
        One possibility is that Yanukovich is more humane than putin or lukashenko. I don't know enough about him to compare but the last two are merciless dictators.
        jacquesm 5y ago
        That's not a real possibility though, the only way Ukraine will be kept down will be with continuous threats. I personally don't think he will live an hour after he sets foot into Kyiv.
        roveo 5y ago
        There's another thing that was different at Euromaidan vs current Russia: Yanukovich and his people had somewhere to run (Russia). Putin doesn't.
        jacquesm 5y ago
        He doesn't have to run to someplace, he can just run into some stuff. Preferably a bullet.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > A million people marching in Moscow would change minds Especially if, say, a quarter of them were military and/or internal security personnel that came out with their gear. Even the least democratic government relies on support of the people to function, but not even the most democratic (and certainly not Russia) depends on each person’s support equally.
  - BbzzbB 5y ago
    A million people marching won't change Putin's mind, only a bullet to the head could (tho I don't expect protesters have a chance to reach him in his bunker), but it could convince even more citizens to walk into fire. However the army will certainly be given the order to kill their own people if they rise up, Putin's learned how to quell a revolt with blood while helping al-Assad with his own. I don't believe for a second he wouldn't turn another one or two of his cities into Grozny or Aleppo if he deems it necessary to deter revolt and make a point. The question is, if people actually revolt en masse, just how far will the military go in obeying orders. I don't believe in god but may it help them all, and us afterwards, if the they can't be convinced to mutiny even under those orders.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      That's pretty much how I see it, which is why I think the responsible choice would be to just refuse to show up for work. Eventually that will cripple the country to the point where everything stops working and it will be much harder to get past that compared to a concentrated protest.
  - depr 5y ago
    >They are not going to kill most of their own people What makes you think that? Do you think the Uyghurs of which there are millions in China should just walk out shaking their fucking keys? If Putin loses the war he will lose power. He will no longer win the next election as he'll be seen as weak. So he can't change his mind and if people start a protest in Moscow it is in his interest to do everything he can to quell it. Furthermore you say you have no sympathy for Russians if they can't manage to get a million people to walk out. So if there are only 10,000 people who are against Putin, they just have to suffer the consequences for the choices that the rest of them made?
- pawelmurias 5y ago
  In this hypothetical scenario I'm pretty sure if united all the Russians would manage to hang putin by his ball from the Kremlin pretty easily.
- drakonka 5y ago
  It did turn into a bloodbath at Euromaidan, but the people still came out, for months, and fought to change a corrupt regime that lied to them, as they have in many other countries in the past. Russians are not helpless. The main argument when this gets brought up seems to be that it's going to be hard and people will get hurt. Of course Putin isn't going to just throw up his hands and say "Ok guys, you win, I'm out". Nobody is expecting that. But we've seen that change is possible, and if the Russians are as against Putin's regime as some like to claim they are (with some even saying it's _most_ Russians), maybe it's time to actually do something about it. In the end, they're likely the only ones who can.
  - therusskiy 5y ago
    Putin was shaken up by Euromaidan and been preparing so it doesn't happen to him ever since. Ukraine 2014 != Russia 2022. Back then Ukraine even had free speech.
    - drakonka 5y ago
      I apologize in advance for some emotion that'll come out in the rest of this comment, but I feel the need to say it. I wish Russian people would then stop telling me all about how most Russians are against Putin and hate him, and then act completely helpless at the thought of doing anything about it. They are just empty words, then, because they're followed by plenty of excuses for inaction. My grandfather is spending another war hiding from bombs in a basement, but Russian people get to catch trains to Finland while telling us platitudes about how "most" of them are _so_ against Putin.
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        And that's the problem right there: most Russians don't hate him. They've been subjected to a decades long barrage of obligatory Putin worship and even today his support is higher than that of the American president. They don't speak any other language than Russian and don't have access to other news sources. This is a real problem, because (1) it all but ensures that this war will last much longer than it should (it shouldn't have started to begin with) and (2) that Russia needs some kind of victory to be able to back out in order to sustain the myth. No such victory can be defined. This makes for a very bleak future. Meanwhile the West stands by wringing their hands and crying because 'there isn't anything they can do', when in reality they are just scared. The best bet right now would be for some Russian faction near the seat of power to get rid of Putin once and for all. Of course the instability that would generate would be at least as dangerous as this war, if not more dangerous but it would also have the potential to improve things. I won't say anything about your grandfather because anything I could say would sound meaningless.
therusskiy 5y ago
Unfortunately, not all Russians are against this war, many people don't even know that there's war, because as of now even saying "Stop War" is punishable by 3 years in Prison, distributing non official information about the war is punishable by 15 years in prison. All free media is banned as of now, newspapers closed down so their journalists don't go to prison. As for protest, if you think there's a lot of military in Ukraine, wait and see how much military is in Russia. There's 400k "internal" army alone that is dedicated to fighting its own people. Putin has created this army after the Ukranian revolution so the same thing doesn't happen here. In Belarus 95% of people were against Lukashenko and took to streets like wildfire after the rigged election a year ago, did it help? As long as he controls the military protests can only do so much.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "As long as he controls the military protests can only do so much. " Most succesful revolutions happened, when the military joined the protests. The military is made up of common people after all. And it is hard to see through the fog of war from the distance - but my impression is, that the russian army fights very hesistant and with low morale and badly organized. And they are not welcomed as liberators. No matter the propaganda, they will come home one day and share their stories. I wish you all the best, that you can return one day and manage till then.
  - baq 5y ago
    That is solved by making this branch of military the most privileged and the best paid - basically make them addicts of the regime. This makes uprooting the status quo their existential threat.
    - therusskiy 5y ago
      that's what's happening in Russia, there are all kinds of benefits to being in police. You kids have priority over others when going to college. Despite not having education you are being paid better than the most. You have early retirement and etc.. Many are hired from low income rural areas. If an average Russian is being brainwashed, for police it's much worse. They really think that people coming to protest are being paid by the "West" and show no mercy. Anyone who supports opposition, like following someone in Instagram, is immediately fired.

jacquesm 5y ago

Fair chance it would turn into a bloodbath. Better would a national strike. Equally difficult to organize but much harder to attack.

formvoltron 5y ago
I'm talking about ALL the people that are against Putin. Which if this guy is to be believed is most of the people. They are not going to kill most of their own people. A million people marching in Moscow would change minds.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  I agree it would change minds. And at the same time I'm pretty sure it would end in a bloodbath. Passive resistance against a dictatorship is a lot safer than active resistance. Of course the latter sends a more powerful message but it makes it obvious who to target, when and where and the reflexive response will be to lash out. Still, there is safety in numbers so maybe it would work. But I would not immediately bet on it, otoh simply crippling the Russian economy further could be achieved by inaction.
  - formvoltron 5y ago
    There are already young people brave enough to protest with just 2000 people protesting. I'm talking about a million people standing outside and walking towards the Red Square, shaking their keys. If Russians cannot manage this, then I do not have sympathy whatsoever.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Those people are especially brave because the numbers are so low. But they are being made an example out of and that will have a chilling effect on whoever might have followed them. > If Russians cannot manage this, then I do not have sympathy whatsoever. If you haven't seen this firsthand, then I understand. But I have seen it firsthand. Here is how it went: in the 80's, when solidarity was rising up in Poland a relatively small minority drove the revolution, and found support in a large chunk of the younger generation and some in older people as well. But the bulk of the Poles had seen it all before. Small uprisings that were brutally smacked down, with the local secret police making lists of people to raise from their beds in the inevitable crackdown. So they were advising their kids not to go to the Solidarity rallies, not to protest and so on. In some families this led to harsh words, and some families never really recovered. Because that one time those kids and the people behind Solidarity were right, they prevailed. They managed to achieve critical mass. They showed that you too could be brave and on the right side of history, and live to tell the tale. And eventually, after the wall fell of course all those other people suffered from memory loss and they too had been present at probably every demonstration, instead of sitting quaking in their house about the kind of terrible thing those idiot youngsters were bringing down on their houses. But make no mistake: for all the same money the army would have opened fire on the protests. It wasn't a 'done deal' until it was and it could have very easily gone the other way, as it had so many times before. And note that it was tried: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacification_of_Wujek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacification_of_Wujek (I really don't like the title of that article) and even if you may see the death toll as 'acceptable' the fact is that those people died and if the same thing had happened in for instance Gdansk the death toll would have been a very large multiple of that. It may not have been enough to break the back of Solidarity, but that's not something we will ever know for sure. If you've seen the kind of bravery in Russia in the last couple of years, regarding the murders of journalists, the jailing of opposition politicians and so on then you really have to keep a little bit of room for the cowards that were right every time so far, and who can not with all their fantasy see a million people march on the Kremlin. And by not being able to see it they indeed make it less likely. If it happens it should be massive. 2000 people will get arrested, a substantial multiple of that might get shot, and we're nowhere near the point where a million people would mobilize. But if and when they do, there will be a lot of blood flowing and at the end of it Putin will be gone. But they'd better bring something more potent than just their housekeys.
- Yajirobe 5y ago
  > A million people marching in Moscow would change minds. How? What would they do? They would march and riot and protest and then after a day or two they would go home. Meanwhile the politicians will just wait it out and the show will go on (see Belarus).
  - drakonka 5y ago
    Why would you assume that? (See Euromaidan)
    - utrack 5y ago
      Compare the total area of Ukraine and Russia - and max distance between the border and the capital city.
    - 331c8c71 5y ago
      One possibility is that Yanukovich is more humane than putin or lukashenko. I don't know enough about him to compare but the last two are merciless dictators.
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        That's not a real possibility though, the only way Ukraine will be kept down will be with continuous threats. I personally don't think he will live an hour after he sets foot into Kyiv.
      - roveo 5y ago
        There's another thing that was different at Euromaidan vs current Russia: Yanukovich and his people had somewhere to run (Russia). Putin doesn't.
        jacquesm 5y ago
        He doesn't have to run to someplace, he can just run into some stuff. Preferably a bullet.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > A million people marching in Moscow would change minds Especially if, say, a quarter of them were military and/or internal security personnel that came out with their gear. Even the least democratic government relies on support of the people to function, but not even the most democratic (and certainly not Russia) depends on each person’s support equally.
- BbzzbB 5y ago
  A million people marching won't change Putin's mind, only a bullet to the head could (tho I don't expect protesters have a chance to reach him in his bunker), but it could convince even more citizens to walk into fire. However the army will certainly be given the order to kill their own people if they rise up, Putin's learned how to quell a revolt with blood while helping al-Assad with his own. I don't believe for a second he wouldn't turn another one or two of his cities into Grozny or Aleppo if he deems it necessary to deter revolt and make a point. The question is, if people actually revolt en masse, just how far will the military go in obeying orders. I don't believe in god but may it help them all, and us afterwards, if the they can't be convinced to mutiny even under those orders.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    That's pretty much how I see it, which is why I think the responsible choice would be to just refuse to show up for work. Eventually that will cripple the country to the point where everything stops working and it will be much harder to get past that compared to a concentrated protest.
- depr 5y ago
  >They are not going to kill most of their own people What makes you think that? Do you think the Uyghurs of which there are millions in China should just walk out shaking their fucking keys? If Putin loses the war he will lose power. He will no longer win the next election as he'll be seen as weak. So he can't change his mind and if people start a protest in Moscow it is in his interest to do everything he can to quell it. Furthermore you say you have no sympathy for Russians if they can't manage to get a million people to walk out. So if there are only 10,000 people who are against Putin, they just have to suffer the consequences for the choices that the rest of them made?
pawelmurias 5y ago
In this hypothetical scenario I'm pretty sure if united all the Russians would manage to hang putin by his ball from the Kremlin pretty easily.
drakonka 5y ago
It did turn into a bloodbath at Euromaidan, but the people still came out, for months, and fought to change a corrupt regime that lied to them, as they have in many other countries in the past. Russians are not helpless. The main argument when this gets brought up seems to be that it's going to be hard and people will get hurt. Of course Putin isn't going to just throw up his hands and say "Ok guys, you win, I'm out". Nobody is expecting that. But we've seen that change is possible, and if the Russians are as against Putin's regime as some like to claim they are (with some even saying it's _most_ Russians), maybe it's time to actually do something about it. In the end, they're likely the only ones who can.
- therusskiy 5y ago
  Putin was shaken up by Euromaidan and been preparing so it doesn't happen to him ever since. Ukraine 2014 != Russia 2022. Back then Ukraine even had free speech.
  - drakonka 5y ago
    I apologize in advance for some emotion that'll come out in the rest of this comment, but I feel the need to say it. I wish Russian people would then stop telling me all about how most Russians are against Putin and hate him, and then act completely helpless at the thought of doing anything about it. They are just empty words, then, because they're followed by plenty of excuses for inaction. My grandfather is spending another war hiding from bombs in a basement, but Russian people get to catch trains to Finland while telling us platitudes about how "most" of them are _so_ against Putin.
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      And that's the problem right there: most Russians don't hate him. They've been subjected to a decades long barrage of obligatory Putin worship and even today his support is higher than that of the American president. They don't speak any other language than Russian and don't have access to other news sources. This is a real problem, because (1) it all but ensures that this war will last much longer than it should (it shouldn't have started to begin with) and (2) that Russia needs some kind of victory to be able to back out in order to sustain the myth. No such victory can be defined. This makes for a very bleak future. Meanwhile the West stands by wringing their hands and crying because 'there isn't anything they can do', when in reality they are just scared. The best bet right now would be for some Russian faction near the seat of power to get rid of Putin once and for all. Of course the instability that would generate would be at least as dangerous as this war, if not more dangerous but it would also have the potential to improve things. I won't say anything about your grandfather because anything I could say would sound meaningless.

therusskiy 5y ago

Unfortunately, not all Russians are against this war, many people don't even know that there's war, because as of now even saying "Stop War" is punishable by 3 years in Prison, distributing non official information about the war is punishable by 15 years in prison. All free media is banned as of now, newspapers closed down so their journalists don't go to prison. As for protest, if you think there's a lot of military in Ukraine, wait and see how much military is in Russia. There's 400k "internal" army alone that is dedicated to fighting its own people. Putin has created this army after the Ukranian revolution so the same thing doesn't happen here. In Belarus 95% of people were against Lukashenko and took to streets like wildfire after the rigged election a year ago, did it help? As long as he controls the military protests can only do so much.

hutzlibu 5y ago
"As long as he controls the military protests can only do so much. " Most succesful revolutions happened, when the military joined the protests. The military is made up of common people after all. And it is hard to see through the fog of war from the distance - but my impression is, that the russian army fights very hesistant and with low morale and badly organized. And they are not welcomed as liberators. No matter the propaganda, they will come home one day and share their stories. I wish you all the best, that you can return one day and manage till then.
- baq 5y ago
  That is solved by making this branch of military the most privileged and the best paid - basically make them addicts of the regime. This makes uprooting the status quo their existential threat.
  - therusskiy 5y ago
    that's what's happening in Russia, there are all kinds of benefits to being in police. You kids have priority over others when going to college. Despite not having education you are being paid better than the most. You have early retirement and etc.. Many are hired from low income rural areas. If an average Russian is being brainwashed, for police it's much worse. They really think that people coming to protest are being paid by the "West" and show no mercy. Anyone who supports opposition, like following someone in Instagram, is immediately fired.