They did elect him (with 76.69% of the vote).
People in the West who live in (relatively) democratic countries just go around saying "Russians elected him" without actually understanding what living under an autocratic rule is like. Putin never won a free and fair election. He persecuted his opponents, denied them access to media (and as of today, there's no independent media left) installed dummy ones that play into his hand and falsified the elections.
It's like seeing hunger in a 3rd world country and saying "why don't they just learn how to program and get an actual job?"
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Russian_presidential_elec...
And what people also don’t understand is that they falsify on all levels. First, they persecute their opponents and deny them access to media. If they think an opponent has a chance and isn’t sufficiently toothless, they just don’t register them. Then they cast fake ballots during actual voting. There are reports of fraud during counting: police is known to remove independent observers from the room. If the results at this point are not satisfactory enough, they rewrite the numbers in counting protocols. And even if that’s not sufficient (like in Lukashenko’s case), they can just declare any result they want and beat/jail anyone who disagrees.
I think western commentators on Russian elections/popular opinions just can’t wrap their heads around how corrupt the system is.
Most people in Russia aren’t pro-Putin. They’re indifferent, don’t think about these things much and mind their own business.
End result, some people here for real believing that the people in Russia supports Putin.
It's depressing that the newspapers let themselves be used by him as a tool for manipulation
It's also annoying, I think, that the newspapers keep calling him the "president".