What Can Save Us, Me And You, Is That Russians Love Their Children Too

I took this photo in the House of Austrian History in Vienna.

During the Nazi regime "a lot of Austrians were collaborators, bystanders and perpetrators, but among them were also victims and resistance fighters. Even in the last days of war, tens of thousands fell victims to the Nazi terror."

I think there could be no better explanation why the notion "collective responsibility" is unfair, hateful and criminal. No one should be held accountable for the actions of other people just because they happen to have the same nationality.

When at nursery school they asked us questions like "what color is a carrot?" or "is a carrot a fruit or a vegetable", despite my young age I thought they were taking us for idiots. There were children, however, who reasoned that "a cucumber is a vegetable and it is green; an apple is green too, therefore, it is also a vegetable".

Sadly, some poloticians seem to have skipped nursery school. This is, in particular the case of President Zelensky, who said the folowing in his interview to Washington Post on August 8 2022 :

"Whichever kind of Russian … make them go to Russia. (...) They’ll understand then. They’ll say, ‘This [war] has nothing to do with us. The whole population can’t be held responsible, can it?’ It can. The population picked this government and they’re not fighting it, not arguing with it, not shouting at it."

Firstly, it is important to correct President Zelensky here. Russia is a semi-dictatorship. Presidential elections in Russia are not fair and transparent. You cannot say that Russians "picked their government".

Neither is it fair to claim that Russians "are not fighting their government". Instead of boring you with statiscs, I suggest you consult this wikepedia entry 2022 anti-war protests in Russia - Wikipedia. How dare Zelensky lie so blatantly as to say Russians do not oppose to the war?

Tragically, the nursery school level erroneous equation that states that "Russian army commits war crimes; Sergey is Russian, therefore Sergey is a war criminal" does not seem wrong to a lot of people way past the nursery school age. Tragically, a lot of those people are politicians.

Blind hatred and racism, generalisations have never helped solve any problem. If anyone is to stop Putin, it should be someone who has successful graduated from nursery school.