Some online comment:
So, collectively they were no evil, because of those individuals. I bet some drugs barons aren’t evil too, their groups must have some people who do their best to make things less bad, so to say.
In the end of the day, we cannot name anyone as evil. Hence everyone is equally good, and Russia isn’t different to any other country, the US, the collective EU. As much as North Korea aren’t much different to South Korea.
That’s the narrative I see you pushing. Ask all those so-called ‘good Russians’ are they okay with Russia shrinking, losing some territories (meaning giving freedom for some nations they enslaved, e.g Ichkeria, Tatarstan etc). Most of these so-called ‘liberal Russians’ would be against it. They just wanted the same Russia but without Putin. Not realising it’s their country, their system, their culture, who created that Putin. Most, if not all, generations of Russian rulers were like that. They will create a thriving environment for growing another Putin, another Stalin, another Ivan the terrible, within a generation, unless they’re defeated and forced to reconsider some things. Did you know they started glorifying of Stalin already? The maniac who killed more people than Hitler is praised as a cool guy once again, because most of those who could remember the days of Stalin are long dead now. The constantly pick the wrong heroes, and hence their culture produces Putins en-masse. Also, it must be said loudly he isn’t an independent figure, he’s a front-end for a complex system. Eliminating him now isn’t about ‘now things would be completely different’ is only about creating temporal havoc inside Russia, so they’ll stop ducking with others, and bringing that havoc to others.
To me, and many others who know the history of the USSR, that’s an evil empire indeed. And unlike the third reich, they were never punished for their crimes. Even the opposite, they’re (the Russians) and the most suffered from the WWII, belittling the devastating consequences of that war for the millions of people of Belarus and Ukraine. Russia barely felt that war, but now they yell from everywhere they eliminated the fascism single-handedly. Very useful when actually that’s them who created the very same regime, nurturing it for at least over a century now.