Also, if anyone think it is acceptable to torture average, perhaps actively anti-war citizens to achieve the goal, I can only wish that you get the one chance in a lifetime to experience what it means and takes to survive in an authoritarian country and try making yourself a hero. I'm not Russian but let me put it this way: it is not about your life to sacrifice or your own fear to overcome. Your whole family and friends, they are all on the stake and the cops or whatever will absolutely go after them to break you. Or they do it for fun. They really do.
This presumes fair and open elections
For people to deprive the government of the popular support however, they have to vote with their life and everything. Look at Hong Kong. Look at Arab Spring. Look at Tiananmen Massacre. (They all ended up in vain, too.)
It's not some kind of natural process that will just happen.
If you have further questions about these points please see what happened to the Iraqi women and children (and yes, also men). Great minds and moral leaders like Madeleine Albright[0] will provide you with a shining beacon of purifying truth.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_Albright#Deaths_by_s...
Maybe Putin thinks the injustice being visited upon the people of Ukraine is a necessary evil as well.
But now we're just arguing what evils can be justified, and what cannot.
Sometimes we just have to choose one way or the other and pray it wont go too wrong.