According to recently published statistics from the Russian authorities, more than 80 percent of the Russian people support their country's invasion of Ukraine. This can be explained in two ways:
- Either the information is wrong, and everyone knows that with the reality of freedoms being suppressed in Russia, the process of sounding opinions cannot be that impartial and that its results have been published only because they are compatible with the views of the government.
The information is likely correct. I've spoken to some Russian friends who are themselves reasonable people and oppose Putin, but the general population is really that messed up.
When Russia invaded Kharkiv, a Russian living there called his family in Russia to tell them that the buildings next to his had been shelled, and they didn't believe him. They said "The Russian army would never do that. It must have been Ukrainian soldiers in Russian army uniforms."
The Russian army is utter scum, they were trained Hitlerjugend-style.
Russian soldiers enter Ukrainians' abandoned apartments and live there like they're their own. They take clothes from their wardrobes and use them as toilet paper.
A group of Russian soldiers stopped a Ukrainian lady in her 80s and one of them pointed his gun at her dog. She said "Please don't kill my dog. Kill me instead." Then he pointed it away and all the soldiers laughed.
They shot a lady who was in her car with her baby. They shot her in the head, just like that. For fun.
It's been Russia's policy for centuries to create a population of idiots, through the promotion of alcohol, propaganda and mass executions of those who dare think, and they've been rather successful at it.
The world knows Hitler was a bad guy, everybody knows about the Holocaust etc. but most people don't know what Russia is like. I'm Polish myself and the elderly in my country who remember WW2 will tell you that "the Russians were worse than the Germans." Grandmas tell their children "Eat quickly, because you never know when they're going to return." They also say "What's in your stomach is yours, everything else is Russia's."
Read up on the Katyn Massacre, in which the Soviet Union executed 22,000 of Polish officers and intelligentsia.
Nothing has changed; Putin is another incarnation of the political spirit of Russia.
And France and Germany want to negotiate with this psychopath...