I think it's very naive to think of states as 'benevolent'. I certainly don't think of Russia, or any state, that way.As for protesting against the war in Ukraine, there was a woman who did that by disrupting a live TV news report to protest against it. She got... a fine.

Meanwhile, in Germany they're threatening to arrest people who use the letter 'Z'.

The fact that a country that's actually at work and in an existential conflict goes easier on dissent than do Western European countries show just how bad things are here.