This shouldn't be downvoted as Putin is indeed quite popular, it's weird.
A Russian dev I knew mildly supported Putin, but he was in Canada to do dev work due to limited opportunities back home. We talked about Putin grabbing VKontakte and corruption etc..
They guy was very smart but the cognitive dissonance of him not realizing that Putin is literally the 'King of Corruption' that essentially supports and enables all of those terrible things is literally why he had to leave Russia.
But as long as 'Putin is Strong' (or appears to be) - they like him.
I've lost a lot of respect for Russians since 2010, in much the same way I lost a big chunk of respect for many Americans during the Trump era. It's one thing to be 'pragmatic' and accept Putin as the 'lesser of other evils' or to not understand business and therefore believe that Trump is a 'genius businessman' ... but it takes just a tiny bit of self-awareness to see past the stupidity.
Putin is extremely corrupt, not directly tied to the Mafia but essentially it's under his umbrella because he enables it.
If Putin was an actual 'Patriot' he would be viciously going after corruption, instead of just mouthy oligarchs and murdering journalists, he'd be putting top corrupt officials in jail and trying to transform the dour expectation that Russians have that their 'Leaders are Corrupt and That's The Way It Is'.
The fact that a leader can almost openly murder opposition opponents and journalists, and intelligent, educated people just believe the propaganda is staggering.
I had dinner with a nice, educated Russian girl who seemed surprised when I illustrated to her all of the shenanigans of corruption at the Sochi Olympics, as if it was the first she had heard of it.
It's understandable that uneducated rural people with no access to information buy into propaganda. But it's unacceptable that urbane, educated, Russians support that guy. They'll reap what they sew - the same goes for everyone else.
I have team members stuck in Belarus, they're pragmatic about it. Lukashenko doesn't have hugely popular support but I'm feeling that Belarussians are more chill than Russians. They're also pretty much ethnically Russian, so there's that and the economy is naturally tied to Russia.
I'm a Russian immigrant to US and very much anti-Putin, but in order to understand the Russian perspective you have to understand the psyche and history of a country, not just facts. And that's a lot harder to do - there are some metaphysical manifestations of that collective psyche that will be opaque to any outsider looking in.
You have to realize that lots of Russians still remember gangs of actual criminals roaming around in the 1990s and being afraid for their physical safety; food shortages and everything else from the late 80s through to the end of the 90s; inflation that made your savings disappear before your eyes (and shortages/limits of all physical goods which meant there was no way to escape it). My grandparents had enough savings to buy four cars at the start of inflation (quite a bit of savings at the time), and after the inflation they ended up being able to only afford two couches with that money. And that's just the 80s/90s.
Historically, Russia has a very bloody history and suffered greatly in WWII (and generally has suffered the highest percentage of losses in any violent conflict); the attitude a lot of people have there is "better the devil you know than the one you don't". And it checks out historically - the Revolutions that have historically been attempted in Russia didn't exactly lead to anything good for the average person.
So while yes, all of the things you outlined are evidence of a cancer in the system, a lot of people still see it as better than the alternative(s) that they tasted in the 90s - which is why the situation persists. You're starting to see pushback from the generation(s) that grew up after the Union collapsed and that have no memories of the 90s, but otherwise the collective pain & memories are quite strong.
A Russian dev I knew mildly supported Putin, but he was in Canada to do dev work due to limited opportunities back home. We talked about Putin grabbing VKontakte and corruption etc..
They guy was very smart but the cognitive dissonance of him not realizing that Putin is literally the 'King of Corruption' that essentially supports and enables all of those terrible things is literally why he had to leave Russia.
But as long as 'Putin is Strong' (or appears to be) - they like him.
I've lost a lot of respect for Russians since 2010, in much the same way I lost a big chunk of respect for many Americans during the Trump era. It's one thing to be 'pragmatic' and accept Putin as the 'lesser of other evils' or to not understand business and therefore believe that Trump is a 'genius businessman' ... but it takes just a tiny bit of self-awareness to see past the stupidity.
Putin is extremely corrupt, not directly tied to the Mafia but essentially it's under his umbrella because he enables it.
If Putin was an actual 'Patriot' he would be viciously going after corruption, instead of just mouthy oligarchs and murdering journalists, he'd be putting top corrupt officials in jail and trying to transform the dour expectation that Russians have that their 'Leaders are Corrupt and That's The Way It Is'.
The fact that a leader can almost openly murder opposition opponents and journalists, and intelligent, educated people just believe the propaganda is staggering.
I had dinner with a nice, educated Russian girl who seemed surprised when I illustrated to her all of the shenanigans of corruption at the Sochi Olympics, as if it was the first she had heard of it.
It's understandable that uneducated rural people with no access to information buy into propaganda. But it's unacceptable that urbane, educated, Russians support that guy. They'll reap what they sew - the same goes for everyone else.
I have team members stuck in Belarus, they're pragmatic about it. Lukashenko doesn't have hugely popular support but I'm feeling that Belarussians are more chill than Russians. They're also pretty much ethnically Russian, so there's that and the economy is naturally tied to Russia.
It's feeling a little bit like 1985.
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