[brokenmachine]

What you're saying is there's no 100% safe way, not that there is no way.

Apparently desperately wanting change in Russia means desperately wanting someone else to change it for you, which perfectly aligns with the apathy the Russian population is infamous for.

If Putin somehow became unable to provide the population with food for three days, or pay his security team, you'd all quickly discover what desperately means, and I'm confident the problem would resolve itself quickly.

Your population's apathy has become the whole world's problem. pls fix.

[grishka]

So what, exactly, is your suggestion? "Do something"?

[brokenmachine]

Yes, precisely that.

[grishka]

And nothing more concrete?

[brokenmachine]

Not sure what concrete advice you expect me to write here in a public comment. I'm not in Russia, only started learning about Russia 3 years ago, and know nothing about you.

I presume you're good with computers so have the ability to access (and distribute) information that others may not. There's historical precedent, research how people have fought oppression in the past. Many books and manuals have been written about how this is done.

You may be able to access forums where like minded people can discuss and possibly work together. Obviously stay as safe as you can.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. We must remember that one determined person can make a significant difference, and that a small group of determined people can change the course of history."

You're the best one to know what you can achieve - but I can tell you this, it's not nothing.

Anything that makes the mechanisms of oppression less efficient is a step in the right direction.

Every mechanism has weak points, leaky abstractions and incomplete assumptions. Find them.

[grishka]

There is no problem with access to information. Everyone who wants to access government-blocked resources knows how to do so.

The problem is that political change can't happen on the internet. And as soon as anyone tries to do something — anything — to that end in the real world, they face very real and fierce repression.

The consensus among most of the opposition-minded people at this point it that it's just better to wait it out because there's currently no opportunity for change.

[brokenmachine]

They've won then. Nobody can do anything and Russia is lost and has become North Korea. I don't believe that.

How do you think change happens? Someone does something, while you continue to "wait it out".

Look into the Arab spring and many other examples of people changing things in ways that probably seemed impossible just the week before. Nothing was 100% safe, and yet it happened.

I hope that somewhere out there is a Russian that doesn't think it's "just better to wait it out", and isn't just impotently waiting for a fantasy 100% safe solution to be provided without any sacrifice.

I do understand that it's scary, but from the perspective of an interested outsider looking in...

Just like the Russian military, Russian society seems like a disorganized drunken shitshow, not well-organized nor impossible to overcome with concerted effort. It's all lies, bullying, bluster, imaginary facades, short-sighted and selfish corruption. Vranyo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz59GWeTIik

In comparison, I'm sure you'd agree that North Korea is much more of a brutal, almost impossible to overcome dictatorship. People starving and with no electricity.

What do you think would happen at a North Korean rally if the people threw the flags in the trash immediately after, with open disdain for the authorities, as they do after Russian ones?

That's the society to which you're headed.

Don't kid yourself, you are not headed in the direction of a society where 100% safe solutions will present themselves out of thin air. Russians need to do something to change that direction before it becomes increasingly difficult.

You have been lucky so far that you have been comfortable enough to have the luxury of not understanding what desperate means. Your stomach is full and you and probably nobody from your family has been mobilized yet. You can pretend the war won't affect you.

But it will eventually. As sanctions continue to take effect and resources are squeezed, times will become even tougher and the Russian people will lose more and more of their ability to create change.

They're already sending meat waves on motorbikes and golf carts against entrenched positions. Almost 500,000 Russians dead or wounded, for what? Defending the motherland from NATO, a defensive alliance? Nobody was attacking Russia.

This is all nothing but a manufactured distraction from the authorities' own financial corruption and mismanagement.

Soon enough will come Totaler Krieg and the paper-thin mask will come off.

Relatively free access to information will be restricted further, to strengthen the propaganda which will trend more and more towards alternate reality propaganda.

Russia's greatest success has been their post-truth propaganda that made their people, especially the ones without access to the government-blocked resources, apathetic and unable to determine truth for themselves despite relatively straightforward (for you) access to information.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdS-lwb58KU

The whole world is now having to deal with the consequences of your apathy.

Why do you think they made laws against disrespecting the military? Because the truth, if it was distributed to the ones who don't have access to it, is a weapon that will work against them. Bullies are weak and they know it. Also, their resources are getting more and more stretched the more they waste in Ukraine.

I'm sure with a bit of imagination and introspection you can think of other weapons that might work as well.

Or, hopefully someone else will, because you seem to have given up.