Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Scutter

Accident or targeted?

Either way (if true) Russia will blame Ukraine for this.

I agree they certainly could do with the laugh although it might be more beneficial if you contacted your inlaws and your wife's friends and told them about the raping torturing and murdering that their soldiers (some of which are probably their relations) are carrying out in Ukraine. Or perhaps they already know and like most Russians don’t give a f**k!

If I remember correctly one lad was dragged off by a snatch squad while saying positive things about the regime to a reporter.

...

And unfortunately also Russia's abundant resources means that Putin and his oligarchs and the state can plunder that for wealth and power and don't need to really depend on its citizens in the same way as the US or Germany. They can also use this money for 'bread and circuses' and foreign adventures.

Ultimately the Russian people are losers too, even before the Ukraine war...

In what is a classic illustration of the “resource course”, abundant natural assets have inhibited the Kremlin from trying to create a modern diverse economy. The proceeds from selling fossil fuels go directly to the Kremlin’s coffers, liberating Putin from any reliance on domestic or external support. As a result, it is the regime rather than the average individual that is well-resourced, and when it comes to the quality-of-life Russia lags far behind. The typical Russian man, for example, lives to just 67 years of age, behind Libya, North Korea, Rwanda, Cambodia, and Bangladesh (in Ireland, the figure is 81).

https://www.thejournal.ie/readme/opinion-putin-state-of-the-nation-speech-6001372-Feb2023/

Very easy for posters to pontificate from on high about the guilt that ordinary Russian citizens bear for the actions of their authoritarian regime, when said posters are at 0 risk and have nothing to lose themselves from it.

If your friends or family were living under such a regime you'd be the first to tell them to stay shtum

Calling on Russians to do what citizens of many countries, including our own, have done down through the years is not pontificating it's called rebelling. Staying shutm as you call it is at best cowardice and at worst acquiescing .

A Russian motivational speech. (Joke). It's not from a Russian. Russian peaceful. Russian superior beings. Russian apathetical. Russian non caring. Russian selfish. Russian high nazi rulers to take back Berlin. Russia Putin.

Dan have you ever visited or lived in Russia? Well I did, for several years in fact, and I can tell you that not all Russians are murderous raping ardent followers of Putin. But to be born in Russia is to be born in a prison, a gigantic open air prison, but a prison nevertheless. You carry documents with you all the time, a kind of internal passport, (plus the "normal" international passport ) do not leave home without it. You are liable to be stopped by anyone from variety of different police, some in uniform, some not, at any time, day or night, on the street or at home, in the bar, on the metro etc. Break any one of Putin's laws, ( constitutional Law went out the window, unless it suits Putin) and you go to the real prison, or Ukraine, and life will become immeasurably worse for you. As a kid and by the time you become a teenager, you will have become very familiar with the Police and how life works in Russia. An incident, a tiny tiny incident in a public place will draw wagon loads of Police dressed in full riot gear on top of of the instigators, and we have seen many examples of this, especially this time last year in the beginning of the invasion. They did not last very long though, did they? Putin clamps down massively on protests, because its the one thing that he really fears. At this stage although there are faint signs of revolt and anti-war-Putin sentiment starting to show, it will take an organized block ( Military, Oligarch's, Silovicki) or from one of the republics to break the ice. Then you could see a massive show of anti Putin protests, enough to bring him down. Asking why ordinary Russians why they don't do like other Country's have done ( and are doing presently, Iran being a case in point) and revolt, are forgetting that there are country's like China, N Korea and Iran etc which have held their people in a grip of Iron for many years and still do. Its not so easy to get rid of a dictator.

Could it be because that while protesting outside the Russian embassies, the people inside are busy taking pics of the protesters and sending them back to Moscow FSB ( or others) who are identifying them and preparing nice fat files about them and their relatives. Putin's criminal state apparatus octopus has many long reaching tentacles.