Astonishingly, the Russian population in general appears to believe the "Big Lie" that Ukraine is ruled by neo-Nazis and that the invasion was necessary to prevent a NATO-led attack on Russia with Ukraine as the willing pawn. They also believe that the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine was being oppressed, even subject to genocide, and that all the evidence that we are witnessing about massive civilian casualties and war crimes by the Russian forces are either staged and fake, or false flag attacks by Ukraine against their own population in order to put the blame on Russia.
It is hard to believe that millions of people can be so easily and completely deceived. Even if the Russian state-controlled media is forcing this propaganda on Russian citizens, there are alternative sources of information even in Russia. You just need to make an effort to find them, and you need to be open minded enough to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, the reason that the picture painted by the Kremlin differs from the reports from everyone else in the rest of the world could be that the Kremlin is lying, rather than the rest of the world.
We get a constant stream of heart-breaking stories of people in Ukraine calling relatives in Russia to inform them of deaths in the family due to the constant and indiscriminate attacks on civilians, only to be met with disbelief. People on the other end of the line choose to believe Vladimir Putin's lies over first hand reports from their own kin.
Now, in 2022, information is available to counter the propaganda, and to make it crystal clear to anyone that cares enough to listen that everything Putin says is a lie. The problem is that they don't want to know. They hide behind the propaganda and choose to remain ignorant of what everyone else in the world watches in horror.
The Russian people is no longer without blame. They are supporting their dictator for life even when he goes berserk, invades a peaceful neighboring country and murders thousands upon thousands of innocent people. Their continued refusal to see through the easily disproven and increasingly preposterous lies shames not only Putin, or Russia as a nation, but every Russian who still won't listen to reason.
