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It isn’t just Ukrainians that are fleeing Ukraine – we’re seeing Russians fleeing Russia.

One Russian economist estimated that 200,000 Russians have fled their country since the war started, and there’s polling showing that among Russians between the ages of 18 and 24, 43% wanted to leave the country for good.

So what’s going on? I’m hoping it’s a brain drain. I’m hoping it’s people ashamed of what their country is doing. I’m hoping it’s Russia’s best and brightest saying “Hell No.”

President Zelenskyy was very clever to . I don’t think it will get him his no-fly zone, but I think he achieved something almost as significant. He forced us to watch, up-close, the depravity that’s unleashed when soldiers obey the orders of a tyrant.

Every demolished apartment building, every victim you saw was the result not just of Vladimir Putin issuing an order, but of a Russian soldier following that order.

Those soldiers were raised by Russian parents whose generation overturned communism in 1991. I saw it happen. There were soldiers in the heart of Moscow who refused to fire on their own people. And because of that, the Communist house of cards collapsed almost overnight.

I still wonder – how could the parents of that generation raise children willing to lob the mortars, fire the missiles, and drop the bombs that are destroying inhabited apartment buildings today?

We need to know. Because in a world bristling with weapons of mass extinction, the last defense against a depraved tyrant are the people in the chain of command.

The only thing that can save us is to raise kids whose integrity can survive the indoctrination, who know right from wrong, who will put conscience above all, and who, should the time come, will say “Hell No.”

Listen to Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5 – 9 a.m. on ³ÉÈËXÕ¾ Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.