If The Tale of the Crosseyed Lefthander from Tula taught anything, it was not to polish rifles with sand. But the memo's still not getting through despite the upgraded steel fleas.

Book: The Steel Flea, Nikolai Leskov, 1881

>>"He also rotted Russia from the inside, putting only incompetent but loyal acolytes everywhere."

Not really. I recommend talking to Russians of certain age. What they say is something like "sure, Putin is far from perfect, but he saved us from the 90's"

I don't think most people understand how bad things were there after the wall fall. The usual human reaction is turn to a strong man that put some order in the chaos.

In other countries this sounds like the sort of thing that launches never ending coups.

Weakening the army and making sure everyone below you is incompetent is actually a great way of preventing coups. Convincing your international competition to be incompetent is much more difficult!