Many of the people who are fighting on the Russian side in Ukraine are the same protesters who came out into the streets in 2011-2012 to protest against Putin and his falsified elections. This might seem illogical but it isn’t.
I remember reading the reports from those protests in Russia and laughing so much I had tears pouring down my face. One protester after another would write on their Facebook wall, Twitter or blog: “After the protest, we went out to a restaurant to celebrate.” This sounded so funny because Ukrainians don’t leave the site of a protest until they get what they came for. I can’t imagine a Ukrainian who’d go out to celebrate a protest that lasted 2 hours and achieved nothing. Of course, the Russian protests were a failure because people congratulated themselves so much for simply attending and never actually did anything beyond that.
The former Russian dissidents of the 2011-2012 know that they messed up royally and ended up strengthening the Putin regime. Accepting and supporting with weapons in their hands that very regime while trying to kill the pesky Ukrainians who are so much better at political protests is a way of making themselves feel better about the resounding defeat they experienced 3 years ago.
Clarissa's Blog 