Ah, love seeing liberals always scapegoating one guy at the top instead of the capitalist system that brought them to power in the first place.
If Pootin died right now, he'd just be replaced by someone similar. Or worse, since most his real opposition currently are even more right wing than him. Unless the material reasons for this war happening in the first place aren't dealt with (ie the 2014 anti-Russia US-backed fascist coup and the subsequent killing of ethnic Russians and Eastern Ukrainians and Crimeans for resisting), nothing will change.
From a comment below
The situation in Ukraine is an inevitable escalation in the war that started in 2014 with the US-backed fascist coup in Ukraine that goes against the interests and wishes of Eastern Ukrainians
and the subsequent killings of ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine, like Donbas, DPR, and LPR, by the coup gov for resisting.
To be clear, I don't support the invasion per se. In fact, its goal of suppressing fascism in western Ukraine seems to have kinda backfired from this after all, with the Ukraine gov using this as an excuse to suppress the left.
But the point is, what else could've they done? The US had meticulously blocked off all other options over the years. Russia had already tried to join NATO multiple times from even before the USSR’s overthrow and have been denied (since it's an imperialist org whose entire purpose is to suppress socialism globally, and particularly supress Russia) and they already had the Minsk agreements which the US sidelined through the coup. Not doing something about it would lead to the continued killing of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine by the coup gov, and NATO getting even closer to Russia since the post-2014 US puppet gov doesn’t abide by the Minsk agreements.
Ah, why didn't the world leaders think of that? Just press the "peace" button! That will stop the baddies from being bad! Just say "chill out man, we tryna get peace".
They could have had peace almost two years ago, but the western power pushed for continued war. They dont want peace, they want global politics agendas.