After all, it was the Russian government that played a heavy hand instigating the identity politics campaigns in the US to cause fractures and division between people.

It was actually the Ukrainians who did more damage in that regard than the Russian troll farm. The troll farm was no more harmful than what our or any other government does to try and sway/intervene in another countries election processes.

Will this backfire on Putin and rather than creating controllable division in Russia, unite a public force against the regime? Yes, Russia has a military that could likely quell resistance, but those soldiers are people too, will they go against their own families because they have been ordered to? Is their loyalty to Putin, the country, or the people they love? To them, is it Putin who represents Russia the country, or is it the people they love?

I am not of an opinion that would happen without a physical intrusion into Russia by outside forces. Putin is brutal take no prisoners type of guy, I think to many people in Russia still live under a majority fear of that.

I don't know where all of this is going to lead, but as I see it, there is a massive difference between the Russian people and the Russian government. This becomes a problem though as we have seen in the US over the last decade where people do not see eye to eye with the government, yet still love their country and assuming this isn't the same for the majority of countries, is folly - as it is their home.

Agreed, there is a vast difference in perspective there.

I don't know what will happen with this particular conflict, but the way to ensure that these things don't happen in the future, is to take the power out of the hands of the governments and return it to the people, letting them govern themselves. This wasn't possible at scale in the past, but we are not living in the past anymore - well, at least some of us.

Didn't work out to well for Libya.

It is economic control that allows the governments to have power of the people and if we excise that from their hands, they are the ones left impotent, as their existence relies on us, not the other way around. We can defund them, make them obsolete and lock them out.

This is true but remember we've entered a time period now where they have somehow calculated they could live without a good number of us. To make change though people have to try moving forward in a totally different direction to break the cycle.