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antiloper

Not every russian works in the Kremlin.

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No, but 4 out of 5 Russians dig[1] their dictator[2].

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/896181/putin-approval-ra...

[2] https://pace.coe.int/en/news/9191/pace-committee-examines-th...

Apart from the questionable nature of polling in a totalitarian dictatorship there's also the question of propaganda and lies making people support things they shouldn't.

The Iraq War being the go to example of the West.

From what I've heard, Levada Center statistics are generally considered accurate.

Official statistics in Russia don't mean anything anymore unfortunately

Even worse: it's used as propoganda itself, they export this idea of all russians being united against the west bla-bla-bla. While in reality most people just don't want to think about it, and the state does everything to keep the "normality level" acceptable. This may sound unrealistic to the americans who seems to have their political opinion all the time, but russians just don't care, there're even jokes about "not interested in politics", not even if it threatens their lifes

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I don't read it as exactly whitewashing Russians. Embracing passivity is also a choice.

Almost all the Russians I know personally support the war. They aren’t some silly ‘90 years olds with Alzheimer’s’ crowd, most of them are software engineers. Some of them know I live in Ukraine, yet they tell me they will ‘liberate me soon.’ From my own free will, I suppose.

Keep asking them why, they will normally fail after a couple of back and forth.

"liberate us? Why", we are more free here in Ukraine.

Follow up would be: are you free enough to be against the war?

Why did so many Russians flee?

Etc...

Ps. Good luck... It's cruel what is happening now.

Oh no, those who are ideological won’t fail quickly. It’s not that you show them there is no logic and they change their minds. It’s more like absolutely controversial realtors would peacefully coexist next to each other in their heads. The same way those conspiracy fanatics do.

It depends.

A lot of times they are stuck with the recurring why loop.

Same with the conspiracy theorists.

Tbg. Sometimes they do find a farfetched reason that actually makes sense somehow.

The normal rule is that it's too farfetched by then. And you could just say: do you realize how crazy that sounds? What if it's "just" .... x.

Eg. for Elon Musk. He probably believes that Russia would nuke and he's just scared.

Or his business in China is at stake. Which means he's getting hated in the West for something he will already lose in the future...

Simple > conspiracy theory

The ones I know all oppose the war. I suspect yours may be more representative though...

We cannot draw a legitimate statistics, as that could be our own bubble. But it’s incorrect to say an average Joe doesn’t support the war. Even those who oppose the war, do they do something? Or do they like ‘I don’t like it, but there’s nothing I can (want to) do.’

But every russian supports the war direct or indirect.

"If you're not with me you're against me"?

If someone sees a smorgasbord of heinous crimes [0] and doesn't speak out against it then them are supporting it.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Russian_inva...

That's redefining "support" to mean something completely different. You'll get in a lot of pointless fights if you don't make it clear to people you're using an obscure definition.

People/companies pay tax, so every products that get bought from russian companies is part of the war.

You don’t need to work in Kremlin to support the unjustified war.

What's next? Not every ru passport holder is evil orc? :)

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