I’m not saying they have easy choices. Or good choices. But they do choose. We all do. I’d even say life is all about making small, imperfect choices.

Around 100 have joined non-Russian institutes in order to continue their physics research work with Europe’s particle-physics laboratory.

Not exactly “completely out of your control”, I’d say.

Yes.

On 18 June 2020, the Russian government lifted its ban on Telegram after it agreed to “help with extremism investigations”.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/telegram-russia-ban-lift-messaging-app-encryption-download-a9573181.html

Which means KGB has full access to all messages.

No, I meant an accessory as in:

An accessory is a person who assists, but does not actually participate, in the commission of a crime.

Of course we cannot. I agree with you that nobody is born evil or a criminal (even psychopaths are not guaranteed to become serial killers).

By all means, if not for propaganda, we would live in a very different world.

But the unfortunate fact is that they did consume enough of that propaganda to do nothing, or worse, follow the orders.

Yes, they are not criminals by nature, but what they do is crime or at least they are an accessory. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessory_(legal_term)

the answer is - it doesn’t matter. the biggest learning from the nazi germany was that you don’t need the entire population of a country to be homicidal psychopaths. all you need is a small group of those psychopaths, control or media, propaganda and you get a perfectly functioning system where normal everyday folks go to their normal everyday jobs.

just those jobs are in gestapo. or in maintenance of gas chambers. or making food for the equally confused soldiers.

of course, we should avoid civilian casualties as much as we can (but apparently russian army is not required) but the system needs to be stopped.

russia has cancer. chemoterapy is not a pleasant procedure that affects both ill and healthy cells. the alternative is, unfortunately, to allow that cancer to spread to the entire planet.

I believe the trick to avoid getting encircled is withdrawing before one gets encircled

Ukraine doesn’t need that land. russia cannot afford not defending that land. The moment it gets too “expensive” for Ukraine, they withdraw. But that will only happen after russia invests heavily into actually recovering their territory.

It’s like in chess when a knight is attacking two pieces at the same time. The one on defense can only choose a smaller loss.

Which is a win for Ukraine.

That’s pretty much the point of banality of evil - you don’t need an extraordinary assembly of psychopaths to run a fascist regime. All it takes is a group of loud populists, generally discontent crowd and, boom, you have “make Germany great again”.

After ww2 finished, both Germanies discovered that they don’t really have enough people without Nazi past that could run the country. So most folks just went back to work to slightly renamed workplaces.

Does that mean they were not complicit? They were and the winners made sure Germans would learn about what they caused.

I guess the only excuse back the was that they didn’t know better. But we do.

Here’s some read for you: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem#Banality_of_evil

Yes, an average russian or Israeli person is not likely to have directly participated in the recent events.

The catch, though, it’s that by not opposing the actions of their governments, they DO contribute to the events indirectly. They pay taxes. They work at factories producing weapons. They make the food that the soldiers eat.

On top of that it’s not russian government who’s currently pulling the triggers and dropping bombs. Just regular folks who just follow orders.

Yes, protesting in russia is not easy, but the war keeps going on because the government sees that people aren’t worried too much about it.

And yes, in both countries there are people who actively oppose, but the majority doesn’t.

And that majority is complicit.

There are other ways of passive or active resistance that is not a direct confrontation.

In the end, it’s still a choice, I’m afraid.

Forced or obeying orders? There’s a difference, you know.