Something in the ballpark of 90 % of those civilians support the war of genocide in some form. Some 30 % are against the war, but most of those are angry about how Ukraine was invaded: They would have wanted it done in a much less bloody fashion.

You talk with Russians, and they keep telling you how “you must look at both sides of the situation”, in other words trying to defend the genocide their country is doing its best to commit. So, of course at least 5 %, possibly almost 10 % of Russian civilians are innocent, but out of the 44 adults that died, that is statistically about 2 to 4 people in the whole plane, plus the five children. Are we supposed to be very very horrified that 9 innocent people died in a plane crash?

In the other hand, the Russia is doing its Human Safari attacks against civilians, hunting them down with drones for fun. And they are targeting mainly civilian homes in their terror attacks with drones and missiles. If the death of those 7 innocent civilians and 40 guilty civilians (because of course, every death is always a sad thing – always to at least some extent!) helps end the war earlier and that saves the lives of 200 innocent civilians in Ukraine (being attacked by the army most of the plane’s passengers were happily supporting), then as a net result that crash has then saved lives of a bit over 150 people. And yes, I prefer 49 dying over 200 dying, absolutely! Especially if those 200 are innocent and about 42 out of those 49 are not. Even if we were to assume somehow all of the 49 were innocent (HOW?! What are the chances for that?!), the balance would still make sense.

And then: They chose to enter a plane, fully aware of the existence of very severe safety problems in Russian aviation. A Ukrainian living in their own home and getting killed there hasn’t really chosen their death as a victim of a terror attack. But someone willingly choosing to use the airplane under the current circumstances has made a completely free decision. They could have taken a train or a bus, but they preferred the risk in order to save time. First they decided not to do anything against Putin, in order to have a comfortable and safe life, then they decided to enter a deathtrap.

Nope. Not terribly sad. Not even for any of the approximately four innocent adults on the flight, because they chose the flight. I am sad for the 5 children, though. But even their deaths easily hasten the end of the war enough to save lives of 20 other children, which does diminish (but doesn’t remove!) my sadness. It’s 5 absolutely innocent people who didn’t know of the risks and even if they did, could not do anything to mitigate them, and that’s always sad. But 5 innocent children dying unfairly is something that happens more often than once per decade.

This war must end. It will only end when Russians get fed up with it. Everything that pushes them that way is more good than bad.