>>47073
>This is a thing, confusing the government/political leadership with the country or the people.

Another interesting moment that westerners rarely understand political situation here. People here aren't subjects of politics, and don't want to be. Majority of Russians support government, but this majority is very passive and have complex doublethink from birth. Like people sincerely saying "yes, we need to crush that evil West, go Putin!", but then running to shop to stockpile food because same people don't trust any word from government (who says that everything is good and will be better). So this isn't situation like people suffering from evil dictator, nor situation when people support glorious leader, and not even middle. For all 20th century Russians had only ~20 years of relatively comfort life, and experienced few pretty serious genocides (revolution/civil war, WW2), so people subconsciously understand how things really work, and easily change their mind when it is about survival.

Good example of modern Russian mentality was 1991, when almost everyone didn't want USSR to fall but literally no one ever tried to save it, even by just going to street protest. There was referendum before and 77% said that USSR must be saved in new form, but only few old generals tried to make a coup that quickly failed.

And some naive westerners also think that Russians need to gather and overthrow the regime, and sanctions would help to move people to streets. But there was recent example from almost similar country: Belarus. It is small country that has less population than Moscow, and they've had protests on almost revolution level, with street fights, terrorism (both from police and from people), very large amount of protest supporters in population, and... nothing changed. Government used hardcore repressions and protests were crushed. Situation in Russia isn't different, there are huge amount of loyal police and paramilitary force that wouldn't surrender easily but can do any inhumane act without remorse.