You should get in trouble. Ordinary citizens of russia must finaly get that russia started WAR. Many still don't beleieve it. As mass media shows only BS about freeing Ukraine from fascists, info has to get to them via collapsed currency, economy, denial of services and other alternative means.

I support free speech and access to a free, open, and uncensored internet for everyone on this planet and I wont discriminate based on nationality.

> I wont discriminate based on nationality.

When a whole nation turns evil, you should.

According to your logic the whole entire nation of Ukraine is evil because some Ukrainians decided to shell schools and homes. https://youtu.be/PGl5USbBLIo

Calling a whole nation evil is bigoted and ignorant as it gets. The Ukrainians deserve to be invaded but even if they didn’t, there are countless brave Russians risking their lives speaking against an evil murderous government, and you call these people evil? Shame on you.

Troll troll trollety troll.

> Could I (US citizen) get in trouble for providing free VPNs to Russian nationals?

Yes if they do anything illegal and it's traced to your account.

> Would these Russians get in trouble for using my US based VPN?

Maybe, depends on laws in Russia.

> I want to support Russians during this difficult time

How about Ukrainians?

> Yes if they do anything illegal and it's traced to your account.

Since when are VPN operators held accountable for their user’s actions? There are plenty of free VPNs out there. We don’t hold Cloudflare responsible when someone makes a death threat using it’s free Warp VPN. Because that makes no sense. If someone committed a crime using my VPN the Netflow /backbone transit logs would prove I didn’t do it and the case against me would be thrown out.

> How about Ukrainians?

They are already getting plenty of support and don’t need VPNs because their internet isn’t censored.

He said he is a citizen and not an operator.

If he was planning on buying subscriptions for Russians then some operators will hand out his details if something illegal was detected.

If he was planning on setting up a VPN of his own on his own connection... then he's in trouble.

Imagine child porn and how hard that would be to fight.

>It’s wrong and makes no sense.

Of course it does. The responsibility for the actions of the political class has to be carried by the local population. Post-war Germany wasn't like "oh that wasn't our country, you're looking at it with the wrong scope! It was just Hitler!" - I hope you see how this still holds, even though the most Germans would never have approved of Hitlers atrocities. This is not a 1%-issue, you seem to misunderstand the dynamics of power. The leaderships (here: Putin) power can only be sustained when its delegated to them by their people. Your throne is worthless if nobody listens to you, and if people listen to you depends on their trust in you acting on their behalf. If your actions lead to their economic demise, you lose their support, and in consequence, your countries policy will change. This isn't the West seeking to have russian civilians suffering. Its Russia, the country, as a whole, that started invading Ukraine and made nuclear threats, to which the world is now retaliating by any means necessary.

What you’re saying is absurd. It was 1 man who did those things, not “Russia, the country, as a whole”. I just try to imagine how I would feel if suddenly my life was devestated by foreign nations all because our president made a bad decision. When I did everything in my power not to elect that president, I voted against him, and I spent countless hours trying to convince others to vote against him as well. But ultimately I as an individual am powerless. So why should I suffer the consequences for something in which I had no control over and nothing to do with? It is injustice. Group punishments are wrong and only used by the most morally abhorrent nations in the world such as North Korea.

> What you’re saying is absurd. It was 1 man who did those things, not “Russia, the country, as a whole”.

So who else is responsible for making sure countries aren't crazy dictatorships where “1 man does things, not the country, as a whole”, if not the population of that country?

Or, to turn your usual whataboutism back on you: So you're advocating the Saddam Solution. If a nation won't itself take the responsibility for the dictators it accepts and condones, others must take it for them.

Those are the only two alternatives. So in saying that Russia won't be responsible for getting rid of Putler, you're inviting others to come in and get rid of him for you. Thank you, I hope someone will!

Oh, and if you try to counter that "That will only lead to WW3, with nukes!"... Well, then the priority becomes figuring out how to make a first strike either so overwhelming or so surprising that there is no response from Russia. If the Russian people has any problems with that, maybe they should reconsider their stance on responsibility for their own leadership.

> So why should I suffer the consequences for something in which I had no control over and nothing to do with? It is injustice.

You had and you did. You, collectively as a people, have not deposed the dictator. Whose responsibility is that, if not yours?

Germany underwent collective de-Nazification after WW2, because the nation of Germany was held responsible for democratically voting Hitler into power and not gettting rid of him when he turned the country into a crazy dictatorship. So why shouldn't the same go for the Russian people and nation?

That is justice, not "injustice".

Unfortunately, you're supporting the dictatorship in Russia by providing your services from abroad. Russians understand that the sanctions are going to hit them hard because of Putin's actions and only Russian people can stop him. The change can only happen from within - poor or rich, weak or powerful, everyone in Russia needs to stand up against Putin to stop the war.

The change will occur within much faster if Russians have a safe and secure means to communicate with the outside world. It sounds more like you (and others who support sanctions) are more interested in making Russians suffer as some sort of revenge rather than invoking any kind of meaningful change in their governance.

They did have those secure means for communications up until now. Nothing changed. Or, dare I say, it changed for the worse. The regime in Russia got worse by the day and the people of Russia, at best did nothing, at worst cheered Putin on.

> I disagree with sanctioning and punishing ordinary citizens for the actions of the rich and powerful 1%.

... I no longer buy this. The war is, unfortunately, very popular with ordinary Russians. And I hope you don't have any illusions that the citizens sincerely support their dear leader Putin.

I don't know what would convince you, but if you're American I will assume that you can't read Russian. So for an English source look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_the_2022_Russ... which is far from unbiased source, but it has a good list of references. So far the anti-war protests gathered barely a couple of thousand of people across the whole country. Even if you multiply those numbers times 10 (because people are afraid of police), and then by another factor of 10 (because official numbers may lie) you will still get a negligible number like 0.01% of the population.

At the same time Berlin alone has had 100k+ people on the streets.

But if you can read Russian, then just take a peek at pikabu.ru and d3.ru (which are like reddit in Russia) or any popular livejournal accounts. You will find too many anti-ukrainian sentiments describing us all as literal nazis [1].

Our soldiers are also finding smartphones of dead Russian soldiers and there has been quite a few photos of their communication back home ( https://i.imgur.com/1OZXgfw.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/oXUL2FJ.jpeg ). The first photo is his communication with his sister where she's asking about the war and "hohols" (derogatory term for Ukrainians), the second photo is his communication with his "beloved girlfriend" where the girlfriend asks to show no mercy to "them", "them" being hohols ... errr ... Ukrainians, I presume, because we, allegedly, would show no mercy to them; which is ironic because if you guys could just fuck off back home it would be really swell.

[1] calling Ukrainians nazis is a fucking bullshit -- our president is jewish, who got elected in an actual election by 73% of the country. Oh yeah, and the runner up candidate (ex-president) is also jewish. And yes, we, unlike Russia, did in fact have an actual elections. If Russians are so against nazis then why the fuck Russian PMC (private military corporation) Wagner is involved here (on the Russian side, of course) whose commander is this fucking asshole with an actual nazi insignia: https://newlinesmag.com/wp-content/uploads/utkin-tattoos.jpg ( from this article https://newlinesmag.com/reportage/the-wagner-group-files/ )?!

At this point I believe that Russia is pretty much North Korea -- their rulers have such a tight grip on their citizens that the citizens are now truly brainwashed into thinking that their dear leader is God incarnate and that the rest of the world is indeed out to get them.

I am Ukrainian living in Kyiv. On 24th of February I woke up from the sounds of rockets bombing the shit of my city. I've been a programmer since as long as I can remember myself, but now I'm making Molotov's to help repel the invaders because I'm now 100% sure that I will be "cleansed" on some trumped-up charges of being a nazi in case Russia does indeed take over Ukraine. And cleansed here means imprisoned or killed, and I'm not being dramatic here, this is the exact term used by Russia as one of their explicit stated goal of this so called "special operation". The best I can hope for is that I'll have few more years to live until I'll be used as a cannon fodder in some other bullshit war Russia starts.

This war is literally an existential threat to me. And from the looks of it, majority of Russians actually support it.

Why are there videos of civilians living in the disputed territory claiming that Ukrainian military forces shelled their schools and homes? https://youtu.be/PGl5USbBLIo

For the exact same reason you will find a lot of videos claiming that Ukrainian military shot down MH17.

Absolutely agree on everything else; tiny nitpick only on one part of the Nazi thing. No, of course Ukraine as a whole is far from "a Nazi nation"; far less so than the Fourth Reich based in Moscow!

But, the nitpick: Wagner kind of cancels out with Azov, doesn't it? That shit really reflects pretty badly on Ukraine; I think she should disavow them.