> aren't Hamas literally the government of Gaza?

The Kims are the government of North Korea. That doesn’t mean they serve its people.

> Have they been renounced by the population in favor of any other government?

Difficult to tell. Hamas did away with elections in their 2007 coup [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Gaza_(2007)

Up until quite recently in history, the vast majority of countries have been controlled by unelected autocrats, and as you say, some still are. But I don't recall that ever bothered us from associating conflicts with the countries as a whole.

We mostly don't waste time dwelling on the ethics of long dead people, and the few that do are usually seen as some ivory-tower kinds without any concern for present issues.

But rest assured that the people that study those things know quite well it's the country leaders declaring wars, not the people.

Point taken.

But I'm still wondering where we should be drawing the line. For example, Russia has arguably not had fair and free elections for over two decades, so should we refrain from saying that there's a war between Russia and Ukraine and instead say that there's a war between Putin's party (United Russia) and Ukraine"?

If you believe Russians are somehow to blame for this war, you are completely deluded.

Some (many) tens of thousands of people were arrested for complaining... But don't bother, their punishment was only half a year or so in prision... And in unrelated news, some (many) tens of thousands of Russian prisoners were sent to die at the Ukraine winter, on the frontline, without guns or even socks.

But no, all Russians are in full support of this war. You can read all about this on the news.

I apologize if that's what I implied, that was not my intent; I'm definitely not looking to put blame on regular Russians or anyone else.

I'm just asking a naive geopolitical question of whether we should in general be talking about countries being at war (and I just offered Russia vs Ukraine as an example), or whether it's more appropriate to think of wars as being between leaderships/militaries, whereas the rest of either country should be considered generally uninvolved? Or if "it depends", where should that line be?