"Putin personally started the war, but every Russian will be responsible," Russian oppositionist, sociologist and ex-State Duma deputy Igor Yakovenko expressed his opinion in an interview with Unian

"There is no doubt, it is absolutely proven every minute and step by step that Putin personally started this war. Without him, this war would not have started. This is proven by numerous testimonies of what happened before the war. And a live meeting of the Security Council, at which the heads of law enforcement agencies stood in wet pants and did not know how to answer Putin's questions. He broke them over his knee. It is known and proven that the General Staff was against this war. It is known that many of Putin's entourage were against the war. And many high-ranking officials did not realize that the war had begun until the very last minute. It is a fact.

At the same time, by starting this war, Putin involved a huge number of people in it, in this crime. And of course, the entire top leadership of Russia, without a single exception, all the deputies of the State Duma, all senators, military leaders, practically government as the whole, and a vast number of ordinary citizens, became accomplices in the crime. All those who crossed the Ukrainian border with weapons in their hands became criminals.

To say that it was the people who gave birth to Putin means not knowing the real history of Russia in the last 30 years. Putin was the result of the special operation "Successor". The problem began to lie in the fact that the window of opportunity when it was possible to keep Russia from sliding first into an authoritarian regime, and then into a totalitarian one, slammed shut in the early 1990s. And the movement toward a totalitarian regime became inevitable. There was no other way for the country to turn off this path. But this did not mean the inevitability of war. The war became unavoidable after the special operation "Successor". And she has specific surnames and first names. And when you say that Russian society gave birth to Putin, you are actually removing responsibility from Putin and specific criminals. This is a hazardous and erroneous formula.

There is a problem of collective responsibility that each person bears. The presence of a particular passport or nationality does not determine it. I don’t know who is more responsible for what is happening - the former German Chancellor Schröder, who supported the Putin regime most seriously, or some auto mechanic from Ryazan with a Russian passport?"