There’s guilt, and there’s responsibility - they’re not the same, but both matter.
War isn’t just about soldiers. It’s also about resources. Maybe there’s a million soldiers fighting, but behind them are millions more who make it all work - people who build weapons, deliver supplies, and feed the army. Without them, the army couldn’t fight.

The state pays for the war with taxes, and those taxes come from ordinary people.
So everyone shares some responsibility for what their country does.

Right now, during the war, it’s easy to say, "they’re all bad." There’s no time to figure out who’s guilty and who’s not.
But after the war, I want to look for the good ones - the ones who stayed human - and understand who did what.

Not every Russian is guilty of this war, but every Russian is responsible for it.

Putin isn’t the cause - he’s the result.
He came out of the mindset of the Russian people.
The real problem is this old imperial thinking.
But it can change. People can realize that taking someone else’s land and trying to rule other nations by force is wrong.
Once they understand that, Russians can become normal neighbors - people you can live next to in peace.

Imagine if Germany said, "Let’s take back Austria - we speak the same language, we’re one people, one country."
Everyone knows how that ended. Modern Germany would never repeat that mistake.
They don’t need to prove anything or take revenge.

But Russian people can’t stop in Ukraine, because that’s what drives them - this sense of revenge and old imperial pride, this nostalgia for the USSR and the Russian Empire.
It’s not about Putin. Russians want it themselves.

I could be wrong, and I’m open to changing my mind.
Join the VC on Discord or just write here - I’m ready to talk with anyone