Our fight isn’t with the Russian people. Everybody says this. How true is it? Our sanctions are going to hurt ordinary Russians — they are designed to do so. Our financial weapons may be a bit more discriminating than the bombs we dropped on Dresden, but there is no such thing as a surgical strike.
Russia is full of men who have grown immensely rich and powerful under the patronage of Vladimir Putin and his junta. So are Belgravia and Surrey and Tribeca and Beverly Hills and South Beach, and so are major sports leagues and symphony halls and equestrian clubs all over the Western world.
No, the Russians (most of the Russians) did not ask to be put in this situation — but, then, neither did the Ukrainians. The heroes of Kyiv surely would have preferred a world in which their heroism — and martyrdom — were unnecessary. But that is not the world we have, thanks to Vladimir Putin and those who have kept him in power and profited from that power — and the burden of dealing with Russia will necessarily fall, to some considerable extent, on Russians.
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