Ordinary Russians are not the enemy
The end of this crisis could be in the hands of good Russians who can see what Putin is doing is wrong
President Volodymyr Zelensky’s video addresses are mostly designed to show Ukrainians that he is still alive, still in Kyiv and still leading the fight against Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
However, despite the war crimes clearly being carried out by Russian forces on a massive scale – the bombing and shelling of residential areas, hospitals and other civilian targets – his latest message contained a note of sympathy for the ordinary soldiers being sent to fight and die in the Ukrainian snow.
According to a BBC translation, Zelensky said his country’s forces were fighting a “strong and obstinate enemy which doesn’t pay attention to thousands of their own people dead, their soldiers dead, [which] gathers reservists and conscripts from all over Russia to send them to this war”.
While this was probably said with Russian troop morale in mind, it is true nonetheless. Putin’s war lust is such that, just as he does not care about the deaths of Ukrainian civilians, he does not care that his own people are dying in order to fulfil his self-aggrandising dream of expanding the territory under his tyrannical rule.
And it is not just soldiers who are paying for his inhumanity, all Russia will suffer severe and long-lasting consequences as its economy continues to collapse under the weight of western sanctions.
Putin has conscripted the entire Russian nation into his murderous war and they, not he, are bearing the worst effects.
It is important to remember that this fight is with Putin and those responsible for prosecuting his immoral and unnecessary war, not the Russian people themselves.
Indeed, the end of this crisis could be in the hands of good Russians, who can see that what Putin is doing is wrong and who are in a position to do something about it.
However, ousting Putin would be no easy task. While the Russian despot’s leading political opponent Alexei Navalny has called for mass protests against the war and “mad maniac Putin” tomorrow, he did so from a prison cell and after being poisoned with nerve agent, almost certainly administered by Putin’s agents.
Viewing ordinary Russians as the enemy will only push them closer to Putin and bolster his strength. With right on our side, Ukraine and the West should instead seek to make allies.