I'm not convinced, this sounds like mystical bullshit to me. There is no such thing as a "Russian soul", just like Frenchmen do not always walk around with a baguette under their arm. Russia (i) hasn't really been democratic yet for historical reasons, and the current regime does everything to make it stay that way, so many people have given up on change in that respect, and (ii) alleged support for someone like Putin is hard to gauge and the data is faulty. Russia is de facto a dictatorship and the suppression of political dissent is pretty drastic. People are not going to be honest about what they really think about Putin and hide their criticism in formulations and poetic use of language like in Soviet times. Most people will remain silent or lie when asked about the government, they certainly won't trust surveys. I wouldn't trust an allegedly anonymous phone survey, for example. They want to get on with their life and arrange as best as they can. It's not different from how people act in other countries under authoritarian regimes.

In history, regime changes have illustrated over and over that the actual support for such a government is way, way lower than as it may seem when you ask around on the streets or in staged elections. Once there is a change and a chance for freedom, support drops from 99% in the fake election to 5% or so. Also, this is not a hundred years ago, people know very well what's going on via the net. Given all that, I doubt that Putin's government has any support at all, maybe from 10% of the elite in Moscow and in the security apparatus and that's it. But what are the rest gonna do? It's a classical collective action problem.