>Have several friends from Russia, and much to the dismay of some of them, Putin's popularity is widespread, the economy, while not stellar, is in good shape, a

>Have several friends from Russia, and much to the dismay of some of them, Putin's popularity is widespread, the economy, while not stellar, is in good shape, and the general population has rallied around the government as a result of the sanctions. This is largely the picture they want to see, choosing to ignore the reality. The USSR crash was also a surprise to unreasonable amount of its citizens. What's actually happening under the hood is massive wealth redistribution and a fundamental crash of the political system, and what comes out from the rubble won't be pretty, especially because a lot of passionate people fled the country. Something clicked in the heads of many people, this is not the usual frog boiling, demons are really out this time. >The situation of ethnic Russians in the Donbas was a legitimate pain point for the Russians No, it never was. The reason Donbas is somehow special at all is just that the FSB-led coup succeded in 2014 there, unlike similar attempts in Kherson, Odessa, Kharkiv etc which failed. Mariupol (at which the 2014 invasion had been stopped) is also Donbas and had no troubles post 2014 at all. (until 2022...) Had they succeed in other cities, the same point would have been made about those by the propaganda. Nobody cared about "the situation in Donbas" (whatever it is) pre 2014, neither did people really care about Crimea, it's all smoke and mirrors set up by Kremlin. If something ever was a pain point for ethnic Russians as well as everybody else, it's regimes that were installed in Donetsk/Luhansk. These are man-eating systems. There's no Donbas anymore. Donbas is destroyed. Donetsk, once a thriving city, is largely depopulated at this point. And not due to "Ukraine attacking it for 8 years", mind you. (context: I'm also Russian who followed all this not from the mainstream media, probably unlike some of your friends)