Also:
They have been doing so for the past five centuries.
And yet the Germans seem to have genuinely changed, and all of the other European powers gave up their hyperfixations with their respective colonialist adventures. Even the U.S. public seems to have, by and large, lost its taste for the sorts of quasicolonial adventures (Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) it readily accepted just a few decades ago.
There's no reason the Russian population (which I do agree continues to tolerate these adventures; though it does not "overwhelmingly support" them) cannot change their attitudes within a generation or two as well.
Given the proper arrangement of facts on the ground, that is.
Specifically: a clear strategic defeat of its current adventure (probably the most farcical of all in its history).
In short, insignificant number of people refuse to answer, and answers cannot be discarded with "that's not what they really think" because surveys measure how people act in the public. One may very well be against the war in their thoughts, but if they go to a munitions factory every morning and fill shells with explosives all day and in the evenings cheer with neighbors over another strike at Ukrainian cities, then their innermost thoughts matter very little.
Germans suffered TWO humiliating defeats in world wars and had to go through painful transformation processes for decades. On top of that they’ve had support of western world.
Russians revel in numbers they’ve lost. 20 millions dead across Soviet Union? Who gives a shit? Можем повторить! (We can do it again!).
So long as kleptocracy is alive in Russia - it will never change. And this won’t happen in our lifetime.
US had to withdraw from Vietnam after humiliating defeat against Vietcong and Chinese/Soviet supplied Vietnam army after huge backlash from general population, as far as I know.
