I appreciate the time you've taken to reply and your good faith approach even though we greatly disagree.

Everything I've referenced concerns russia, in my OP I mentioned that I have minimal first hand life experience with Israel/Palestine (never lived there, don't speak local languages) and that makes me a bit more cautious beyond condemning Israel's immense attrocities against the Palestinians and the low-life, stupid behaviour of Hamas.

You mention labels and human psychology. But what you see as mere labels has enormous real world impact. Would it be wrong to say UK's society outlook on colonialism has evolved between 1890 and the present day; that in 1890 it was a hardcore imperialist society and this is not true today. Using your manners of thinking, UK was never an imperialist/colonialist society - which is clearly actually false.

For people to make choices, they have to have incentives. If we allow them to identify with only the "good" things in a given culture (hypothetically russian literature) and state that the bad things (genocidal imperialism) are someone else's fault, you are only incentivizing their worse possible instincts.

The existence of russians opposed to the current regime in of itself is not a silver bullet. Much of the opposition actually supported the annexation of Crimea. Near universal support for imperialism (and very strong support for genocidal imeprilaisn) is a cultural problem with russia, one that individuals need to change.

They are not going to change if you always (in any and all cases) view such issues as "a mere box". Try speaking Ukrainian in the occupied territories, you won't think this is a mere box or label.

And you definitely won't think it is just some individuals who are abusing you and they have nothing to do with prevailing attitudes in russian society.

Imagine if your friend felt a connection to the Austro-Hungarian empire. Are you saying you wouldn't see an issue with that considering the nature of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (dominance of independent nations by an emiperial family)? "It's no big deal! He just has good associations with a monarchic empire."

Now people reflexively refuse to take a critical look at the nature of russia. Some of it is fear of admitting to be on the wrong side of history (no one wants to be seen as an enabler of brutal imperialism). Some of it is ignorance (Have you ever heard of the Komi republic within russia? Do you know how their language is treated and what the dynamics are for Komi language knowledge ? What do you think the result will be of asking a local court to hold proceedings in the Komi language). Some of it is greed, not only among politicians, regular people too (see the lack of real reactions to the occupation of Moldova, genocide in Chechnya, invasion of Georgia, annexation of Crimea and invasion of Donbas).

The 15% are very much responsible for supporting, enabling and legitimising russian genocidal imperialism. Note that the survey results refer to Ukraine. The situation with Chechnya is far worse with many "good russians" openly saying that Ukraine and Chechnya are not comparable and they are in the right for genociding the Chechens (for "opposition minded russians" it is strange that they believe russian gov data that denied that 5% or the civilian population was killed in Chechnya).

Of course I take offense with your approach. On a practical level (outcomes, not necessarily your intentions), you are giving them go ahead for more russian attrocities.

But the real irony is that your approach is actually harming the russians. They are not going to change if you keep white-washing their support imperialism and treating them like children who are incapable of taking responsibility for their actions.