> It sounds like what many people would expect in any country tending towards dictatorship
> But it doesn't sound ridiculous
> It could have done without the "that's ridiculous"

You didn't get my point. It could not have done without "that's ridiculous" because it is ridiculous, unrealistic and does not withstand any real critisim. It doesn't matter if it meets someone expectations, because the image they are basing their expectations on is cartoonish. That's just not real life. It's like people in Russia who think that the US government forces parents to make their children transgender — completely unrealistic bs, based on exploiting one's ignorance and fears.

> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-60600487 "My city's being shelled, but mum won’t believe me"
> Parents say things that children see are contradicted with their own eyes. The parents are, like your writing, dismissive, laughing it off, saying the other person is silly. Understandably, the children are distressed and think their parents are out of touch with reality.

Why are you extrapolating and using a plural form for a singular case?

What exactly is wrong with "laughing it off"? The fact that this whole issue had captured your attention only a few weeks ago, doesn't mean it's the case for everybody else. What reaction do you expect, that people would get emotional like it's day 1 and not actually year 8? Especially when we are talking about older people and not some zoomers, who had just recently pulled their head from the sand and comfort of debilitating social media.

And in any case, if this lady still has civil communication lines, then sorry, but that's not a real shelling. Real shelling looks like Belgrade in 1999.

> In the West we all know large numbers of people who think naive things. So it's reasonable to think there can be plenty of Russians who think in that way too.

It is extremely chauvinistic point of view, based on the idea that you yourself is well informed in not naive, and everyone else is just a fool.
In real life people have different opinions because they have a different perspective and prior knowledge, not because they are somehow less then you are.

> But at least parts of Russia have a long history of secret police and good reasons for paranoia during the cold war.

Exactly what "long history of secret police" are you talking about that in your eyes make Russia stand out against other parts of human history and make "good reasons for paranoia"?

> it's the 1% possibility that my answer might get processed somewhere with extremely bad consequences if I were frank and vocal with my answers. What would you think if someone you've never met or heard of phoned you at random, in Moscow, to ask your views on the war in the last few days?

I will simply reiterate that the "fear of secret police" you are asserting here is not a real thing for real people. But I get how people who had never talked with real Russians and get all their image of it only from western media sources, as well as only western parts of the internet, would make such an opinion. I think you would like to talk more to real people instead of consuming pre-cooked opinions if you actually want to have at least somewhat realistic picture. Visit ru-net and some Russian web site's comment section at least once.

> You cannot dismiss the re-emergence of that out of hand

And yet I can and I will be as critical and as sceptical as I am in any other case.

> We still remember the polonium-204 and recent Novichok poisonings by Russia in the UK, so we're inclined to think of Putin as still thinking that way

First of all, who is "we"?

Secondly, just to remind you how REAL political assassinations (and not a publicity false flag circus) look like: https://t.me/dubinskypro/12275 -- a post from telegram channel of one of the members of Ukraine's ruling party.

> The recently enacted anti-protest law with ridiculously long prison sentences shows there is a crackdown happening

You were duped by propaganda. There is no "anti-protest" law, there is "anti-fakes" law. Before it, some bad actors were buying ads targeting Russian audience with propaganda, including fakes. Now large media companies operating in Russian jurisdiction had disabled targeting Russian audience altogether.

> We know the authorities like to hand out long sentences for holding the "wrong" views
> Navalny

You don't know much about Navalny apart his shallow heroic image in western media, do you?