It’s not some abstract regime that is routinely torturing people in Ukraine and elsewhere, though. There’s something deeply fucked up about their culture when you consider that absolutely hair-raising brutality has been a hallmark of theirs for centuries now. It’s a colonialist, imperialist, violent and deeply racist mentality.

I had a significant proportion of my family tree (who were Ingrian Finns) genocided by Russians. I’m the first generation in my family for about 100 years who hasn’t either had to live under Russian occupation, fight invading Russians, or dodge Russian agents because somebody in the family dared stand up to them (yes I’m old and my parents are practically ancient). The argument that the problem is their regime just doesn’t sit right with me, considering the shit that the individuals get up to pretty habitually, and the hundreds of years of brutal regimes have to come from somewhere.

This is not to say that all Russians are terrible, nor that it’s a fundamental biological feature of the people, but even scholars think that their culture is – to put it very mildly – extremely problematic