Just claiming you have the right doesn't mean you actually have the right. Ask January 6 trumpers for more information on that subject.
On another point: just because you can doesn't mean you should. You can kick a Lion in the balls but that doesn't make it a great idea.
Then again, I'm sure Russia's leadership knows this and right now is just posing like an 8th grader bragging about his uncle being a navy seal because holy shit, Russia is fuuuuuuucked.
For the next decades it will be busy pulling itself together, trying to rebuild an international economy that doesn't rely 100% on unsustainable practices of just selling all it's minerals, getting rid of the reputation that Putin gave it, trying to rebuild a military that isn't the laughing stock of the world... And all that is assuming that the country doesn't fall apart, doesn't dove into civil war and that say, china doesn't decide it likes the taste ofmsome of the pieces that are left.
Russia is fubar, and right now Ukraine is the victim, butt within this decade, the innocent Russian citizens will be the victims of it all
Are the Russian citizens all that innocent? Those that are born into it, of course. Is it all paid shills and fear that results in 80% approval rating for Putin and this war?
I deeply despise the nationalist gangsters that make up the Russian elite, but this blaming of "Russian citizens" is either incredibly stupid or downright fascist. What do you propose to do to 116 million people (80% of 146 million) as punishment for ...approving Putin? What kind of court are you envisioning? What kind of procedure for establishing what kind of guilt? And even if we do accept the utterly moronic idea that there is guilt in a population like that, how do you separate the guilty from the remaining 30 million "innocent" people? Or is the arbitrary "punishment" of 30 million innocents an inconvenient side-effect of your spite?
I think it's more like they don't and can't care. It's probably the same situation as in Hungary, where Orbán basically micromanages 90% of the news sources the average citizen gets to access, so they of course overwhelmingly approve him and "his valiant fight against the evils surrounding the noble Hungarian nation".