One of the only heartening things in the ongoing, illegal, and increasingly dangerous Russian invasion of Ukraine is the level of dissent within Russia itself. It reminds us to reject the twisted logic — once advanced by Osama Bin Laden and now taken up by leading liberal hawks like former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul — that equates the people of a country with the crimes of their government. It also may prove critical to ensuring a diplomatic climb down for Moscow from its current hostilities, let alone nuclear disaster.

Sizable antiwar protests have been a fixture of Russian cities ever since the first day Vladimir Putin announced the invasion, when thousands of Russians gathered in more than fifty cities that evening in protest. Since then, more than five thousand protesters have been arrested as a result of antiwar actions. So far, the protests have been smaller than those organized against the arrest of opposition leader Alexei Navalny last January, which likely has more to do with the level of domestic repression put in place since then. Just today, a new coalition of socialist antiwar activists in Russia was announced, charging that “the elders of the Kremlin are in the minority” and that “most Russians do not want a fratricidal war, even among those who still trust the Russian government.”

We have other information that hints at the depths of Russian unhappiness and opposition to this war. A petition declaring the action “senseless” and a “step to nowhere” has seen the number of signatures from scientists and science journalists balloon from more than 100 to now over four thousand. Russian scientist Oleg Anisimov later apologized to a Ukrainian colleague at an online United Nations climate conference, telling her, “I am ashamed — as a person, as a citizen of this country . . . that we could not create civil society institutions in our country that could influence the decisions made by the president and the government.”