Not that I disagree with your point. This is a place of intelligent discussion which could perhaps benefit Ukrainians better.
The situation with Russia is much about information. HN is about information and IT, no? HN could be the primary forum to discuss ways to counter MIS-information.
There seems to be a deep problem in Russia, its citizens are mostly duped by misinformation pushed by their government. What kind of intelligent solutions exist or could be developed to counter that?
Sure, some people are hoodwinked by the propaganda. However, a weird misunderstanding is that "if they new what the Truth was, they would surely relent".
From what I've gathered growing up in Russia, that's not quite the case. I don't know why, but a lot of people here have a very apathetic view on politics. In that even if they knew all the "real truth", they wouldn't go into "fight mode", but would instead go into "man, same shit as usual, our life's about to get harder" mode.
I've just chatted with some friends who don't support the war effort in any way and are just as dismayed as your average European Joe (Giuseppe??) (and they have relatives in Ukraine too). What struck me really hard is that once again I had a glimpse of this weird mentality, whereby the person laments being in bad circumstances and start doing a lot of planning (and hoping) on how to deal with the coming misfortunes. Taking control of the change and nipping the said misfortune in the bud is just plain out of sight!
With this in mind, the problem that needs to be solved, in my opinion, is the "victim mentality" in the population, rather than the "misinformation", since "solving" misinformation would seem to push people into the usual victim loop.
Just my 2 cents, and I'm no one and my opinion is based solely on more than a decade of life in Russia.
That is why propaganda is so efficient.
For people who ended up supporting the war, yes. Propaganda worked, because constantly filtering misinformation is not exactly conducive to a normal life. Trust is the default mode of operation for a human who did not grow up in adverse conditions.
But grandparent seemed to refer to people who actually live such a life. People who do not support the government and are preparing for the worst. They distrust everything, they see that innocent people are dying and country is headed towards extreme times, but they treat it as impossible to change. This is pretty bleak.
I think the apathy you describe could be to a large degree result of - misinformation. I don't have the answer nor any particular insight on what it's like inside Russia so I appreciate your input. And I think it's a worthy subject for discussion. The western world is not free of misinformation either.