Compared to dying because of a high explosive bomb landing in the middle of your apartment building I think you got the better deal.

Keep in mind that just having choices is a luxury.

Oh, and your dictator, your primary responsibility. Or do you blame the West for Putin?

It's definitely a better deal than those 300+ civilians and many more military whose lifes were lost, I am not gonna bloody argue about that.

And yet I don't like when people discount broken lifes of Russians who had to flee their country leaving everything behind. Both Ukranians and Russians are refugees in this case. One difference they may not experience is being afraid of passing strangers in a country they fled to.

So much suffering... Everything because of one crazy guy. As far as I've heard even most of Putin's generals were shocked by his decision to invade. I hope one of them can muster courage and get close enough...

The only people that can do something about it right this moment are all in Russia and as long as they don't the carnage will continue (in your name, no less).

Putin's generals have over the years been carefully winnowed down to a bunch of spineless bastards, it's clear that near a dictator of such power you will not find any credible competition, those are either in jail or six feet under. Interesting side effect, that also means that the really competent people have left or have been pensioned off.

And yet, those that are left are the only people with a credible shot at this. And the world - and their country - would likely love them for it, assuming they would live. Let's see which Russian fat cat grows a pair first. I think the touchstone will be when Putin gives the orders to deploy a nuke.

One reason sanctions against Putin aren't harder than they are, is because those of us in western Europe are still taking the relative luxury of (in my case) typing this comment sitting inside wearing an t-shirt, instead of having to wear my skiing inside my apartment.

I.e. the current sanctions explicitly excluded natural gas etc. Russia supplies around 40% of the EU's gas, demand is around 2x as higher.

We could just wear coats, but we're not. We could also do something more about it, but we're not.

Yes, and that was dumb, it telegraphed a very clear weakness to Putin.

That's an interesting sentiment, to ask people who aren't Russian and do not live in Russia to come protest on your behalf to overthrow your dictatorship. Do you think foreigners coming into Russia to protest (or violently riot, as you seem to be suggesting) would do the trick? That's a legitimate question - would Russians take kindly do that kind of initiative? Many Russian people, even the ones claiming that most of them hate Putin so much, seem to be packing up and leaving - are they genuinely hoping Ukrainians and other foreign civilians will come do this for them?

Sorry you had to leave your new apartment and have to figure out how to open a new bank account for your US salary. And I hope both of us get to see our families again.

"Black lives matter" and "Moscow election protests" happened around the same time. I have nothing against BLM, but I can say that many Russians got plenty upset, that all countries had huge protests around the world (even New Zealand) to support BLM, while Russian protests were completely ignored by the international community. Nobody is asking to come to Russia, but we've been alone in our fight with Putin all along, the "West" haven't tried to help us fight his propaganda. I guess he is our problem now, but it's a little too late.

Black Lives Matter protests were about an internal affair in countries not yours, and just like it would be pretty weird to expect Russians to turn up there to help out I think it is a bit strange to expect Westerners to come to Russia to effect change.

The Russian protests were not 'completely ignored', it's just that all we can really do here is report on them.

> I guess he is our problem now

He always was. Now he is also Ukraine's problem (more so than in the recent past).

There was a massive international solidarity shown during BLM which certainly pressured the US government to take the issue seriously. There was no solidarity with Russian people protesting against Putin, and there is still no solidarity now.