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Remind HN: Russian people did not vote for it's government

25 points by asats ↗ HN
Reading the comments about the recent events I see and understand the frustration and the desire to blame "the russians" for the things that it's government is doing. Given that I'd like for you all to understand and remember that the vast majority of the russian population has never voted for this government and it's actions do not represent the will of the russian people.

This is not a conjecture, it's a mathematical fact, you can explore the results of the recent elections yourself and see the scale of the perpetrated fraud: https://ruselection.herokuapp.com/russian-election-anomalies?locale=en

Most trusted russian election analyst Sergey Shpilkin estimates that without the "election anomalies", the current government has likely received around 31–33% of the votes with an estimated real election turnout of around 38%.

Considering that turnout that comes out to around 12.8% of all eligible russian voters that actually voted for the current ruling party. Despite the complete government control over almost all russian media that has been spouting non-stop propaganda for well over a decade, only a tenth of the population has willingly given them their votes.

If it was up to the russian people, this government would not be in power right now, making the decisions it is currently making.

9 comments

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gostsamo
You are correct. I have russian friends and former classmates who are totally against Putin and his wars and who are wonderful people.

At the same time, I see lots of russians who has never voted for Putin, who even don't like him, but who agree with him and his policies for restoring Russia's empire. Many of them will be pretty happy if the country returns to its former ... glory. And, yes, I hold such people responsible.

MilnerRoute
See also: Russian police arrest anti-war protestors in Moscow

https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2022/02/24/russia-ukraine-a...

sbmthakur
Same in St. Petersburg.
karaterobot
In fairness, only 18% of Americans cast a vote for Trump in 2016 (~60M out of ~330M), and only about 25% of Americans cast a vote for Biden in 2020 (~80M).

This is not in any way to contradict your point, rather to broaden it. In general, the actions of any country's government should be thought of as distinct from the on-the-street will of the majority of people in that country. The two may happen to line up, or they may not, but there's no reason to think they do in any given case, or to judge people based on the actions of their governments.

jdrc
That's a huge percentage. In all fairness, Russians are doing a disservice to their long heritage by supporting or making excuses for this cretin. And they must be let known of this.