My concern is that the more we ‘rattle’ and antagonize Russia, the more we’ll find opponents of our ‘cause’ than proponents, in Russia too.
It’s a fine line to wage war on a ‘dictator’ versus a nation and its people. End of the day, Putin for now represents Russia and has considerable support. In Russia, he is largely perceived as a nationalist, not a communist. He is still quite popular.
It is true 15 or 20 yrs ago, following the downfall of the USSR, some or many Russians felt demoralized, even if not communists or socialists. Some Russians more than others. It hurt their pride. Equally, I don’t see Russians turning their back on Putin just because we think or say they should. Actually if we say they should they most probably won’t.
In fact, I’ve seen so much Anti-Russian (not simply anti-Putin) propaganda on British media in the last few months that it has almost lost the impact it was probably aimed to have.
A simple and recent example was when Daily Mail posted an article about the birth of Kate and William’s new child, stating the Russian media and Russian people commenting had suggested the child was born to a surrogate, etc. The Daily Mail story was picked up by literally every single other newspaper in the UK, which published the story online, leading to very unpleasant counter comments by some Brits.
It turned out that the original Russian publication, in Russian language, had vastly different content, never made stated accusations; it was bogus, anti-russian propaganda spread by British newspapers. Point is this type of fabrication will only strengthened Putin’s popularity in Russia at least, and doubtful it’ll help resolve Ukraine issue.
If the Russian people still desire to be a nation of drunks who die young and are ruled by a small clique of money-grubbing thugs, then they'll be the ones who suffer the consequences even if they conquer Ukraine.
THE DAILY MAIL, the last time I checked, is a privately owned paper; it's not the Queen's propaganda machine. I believe most Brits are smart enough to figure out the downscale news media among their flourishing press organs from the highbrow papers. I also believe the UK has a robust and politically divergent number of newpapers that that they should be proud of. I do not think the situation is the same in Russia and neither does anyone with any knowledge of their media. It is sophomoric false equivalency to compare what THE DAILY MAIL writes to what the Putin controlled RUSSIA TODAY does. It's the type of thing the Left liked to do during the Cold War.