I would love to hear the thoughts of this leftist community, not least any comrade in Russia. In the US it's so hard to get any serious Russia news/analysis because of the propaganda here- you have red guys that love Russia & Putin to own the libs, and you have blue guys that hate Russia & Putin because it's their favorite boogeyman. I ask because I personally don't like Putin for his war on gayness (wake me up when we get to war of gayness) but I understand that countries in the US's crosshairs are those that make their history under the least self-selected circumstances. I was looking at some stats when this question came to mind:
UA
RU
So material conditions have definitely improved under Putin, which is a miracle considering the fall of the USSR and the disgrace of Yeltsin, which makes me think there are probably people out there who like Putin for rational reasons, besides owning the libs. I would love to hear your thoughts either way.
Putin is essentially a proto-fascist. Repression of women's rights, of internal opposition, of actual communists (not the comprador CPRF, those are natsocs at best), of ethnic minorities (recent laws being passed of face recognition of central Asians), of queer rights, neoliberal economic policy, destruction of infrastructure and underfunding of welfare... There's essentially nothing to like, other than his country being selected as the enemy by the west and therefore being forced into an anti-imperialist position (also to a great degree because of the communist legacy).
However one must understand that Putin is simply the consequence of international policy towards Russia. Russian capitalists were more than happy to join bourgeois democracy a-la European state, establish deep economic ties with the EU, and become the happy link between EU and China. It's only American geopolitics forcing Russia away from the EU and demonizing the country, creating massive anti-government propaganda, and wanting it to be a failed state whose vast resources and labour pool can't easily be exploited by Europe and China, and least of all for Russia to serve as a link between China and Europe.
It is this demonizing, constant propaganda, western soft power colour revolutions in the Russian sphere of influence, russophobia in the world, etc. which forces Russian capitalists to adopt authoritarian hard-power, represented by the current Putin. It's just the way an industrialized capitalist economy reacts. We see the shift to fascism in the west now that it lags behind in economic development and geopolitical control. Putin is not special.