Ah, but the last point is the interesting part. It’s definitely not for benefit of elites in russia, with some squinting corruption in ukraine maybe made local oligarchs come out ahead.

Anyway, cause it’s not for benefits of elites, the reasoning is more complicated in russia (like genuine dislike of nato 500 km from moscow).

To the first point, not that many wanted to be part of nato either (when it was shoveled in constitution in 2019 (?) it was like low 30s), or renaming streets for heroes of oun. Yet both happened without any resistance, as donbass has demonstrated what happens to those who try to protest.

Re:numbers it implies some 16 percent sympathizers (as it’s snap decision on invasion, it’s not biased selection I don’t think), and if we include 3(?) million who chose to stay where they were we get near parity.

IMHO russia not being capitalist hellhole could have saved a lot of heartache by assassinating nazis earlier, instead of allowing them to grow unmolested, but then it arrived where it’s either let them cleanse donbas and plausibly join nato, or try to shock them in neutrality. Which they nearly did in march of 2022, and then everything went to shits. But I feel you don’t place a lot of culpability on ukraine before the invasion