cocaine_badger

Got a pun from Pornhub. This is going above my fireplace

What usually happens during those "maintenance hours"? And how do you guys handle such large amounts of traffic so well?

Mr. Browder, I am a huge fan of yours, but I would like to respectfully disagree with your statement. I grew up in Belarus, so I may be slightly extrapolating, but I believe that the vast majority of the population is very well aware of what Putin is doing in Ukraine and how that affects them. From what I have seen from the protests in Belarus in the past few years, I think exactly the same tactics are deployed in Russia. Ordinary people are typically faced with incredible retaliation from all forms of the government for participation in any form of protests - and they don't stop on the individual level. They remove people from their jobs, threaten to take their children away, threaten to take away their homes, etc. The culture of Stalin's secret police and erasure of the "non-reliable elements" from the society is unfortunately alive and well.
A relatively small portion of the population is likely brainwashed by the propaganda, but the rest are consistently facing a moral choice between doing what is right and their family's well-being. I think you hit the nail on the head with the description of Russian oligarchs licking the wounds and cursing Putin under their breath - I think this applies to the majority of Russia's people as well. Soviet union did achieve one if its utopian ideals of equality. Unfortunately this only meant that everyone was not equally well-off, but equally scared.