My wild hope for this situation is that somehow Putin and his gang are ousted, and we can Marshall Plan Russia into a successful, prosperous European democracy. Even make them a partner with NATO like we tried to do before. Admittedly the Russian people would have to want that, so that's a precondition, but I'm hopeful.
It's not. There's many ways in which you can get in contact with russians. And many of them actually support putin.
Yes, you can say people are indoctrinated. But maybe so is putin - that's the problem with determinism.
hitler was not one guy. putin is not one guy.
I'm against lifting sanctions when putin dies. Much more has to be done.
Ask someone like Alexei Navalny or Mikhail Khodorkovsky why they stayed to fight and be jailed instead of fleeing. Fleeing doesn't help.
Russia hasn't been conquered since the most recent Russian Empire was formed. But regimes have fallen from within...
Khodorkovsky hasn't stayed after he got out.
And Navalny overplayed his hand. It appears he really thought it was about him, not the movement he had created, otherwise he'd have had his wife run for office, which is what wives of those arrested in Belarus did.