[adventured]

It has been far easier to protest against Putin than most of the prior Soviet regime (except for the very end of the USSR).

So far as we know Putin does not yet operate massive extermination camps and labor gulags as in the prior USSR. He is not yet rounding up and exterminating large groups of the population.

Putin is meek compared to Stalin.

The apologist complaints I'm seeing in regards to Russia and protesting, is that there is a cost to going against Putin. Yes, there certainly is. Of course there is. And there's a cost in Ukrainian blood in not, a cost the Russian people are responsible for.

The Russian people don't get to have their cake and eat it too. They don't get to enjoy the prior good times (relatively speaking) under Putin, cheering him and his ways on when it was convenient, and then not get credit for the blood Putin is spilling in their name now. This machine Putin has built is also partially their responsibility.

A lot of Russians may have to die to stop Putin. That's their responsibility to shoulder for tolerating Putin's regime from the early days when he promptly began committing war crimes and robbing the Russian people of human rights. Or the majority can keep doing nothing and it might keep getting worse, keep getting harder to remove him, and he might move into Stalin mode and start genociding groups he dislikes.