I heard a pretty good radio program today on NPR. A guy was a foreign exchange student in Russia in the 90's and he went back to interview the lady he lived with, a CPA. She referred to him as her American son, and he to her as his Russian mother. She talks about why she loves Putin. The main topic was on Putin's popularity with Russians.

The TLDR is, Russia was shit before Putin came to power, and now, Russia is not shit for average Russians. Putin gets credit for that.

https://www.thisamericanlife.org/763/the-other-mr-president/...