False comparison. Russia’s real GDP per capita has fallen 30% in the last decade [1]. This is true in no EU member.
> what happens if a democracy cannot provide for sustained economic growth?
It typically fails. Particularly if every one of its neighbors is meanwhile delivering quality of life gains.
[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/RUS/russia/gdp-gross-d...
This [1] page shows the yearly drops more clearly. But I think most importantly is that as the US (and increasingly everywhere in the world) emphasizes, GDP/capita often is a poor measurement of how the people themselves are doing. Here [2] is a graph of the change in real wages [2]. That is better than most places in the EU and is continuing upward in spite of ever more sanctions.
The big question is what impact the current wave of sanctions will have. And how that will jive with what may be persistently very high oil prices.
Going back to Putin, I was trying to say that there is not only one person that is behind the recent events, a “despot”, apparently there’s an entire Russian administration apparatus that thinks the same (hence why I linked to that Wikipedia page).