[Catfish]

I think what Kapitan wrote makes a lot of sense!

On one hand Russia needs a strong leader, because its civilian society is almost non-existent. There are worse people than Putin, waiting for their chance.
What we can accuse Putin of is that he does nothing to develop "his" country, on the civilian and democratic sector. We also know this is not easy, after centuries of absolutism and dictatorship, nationalism and the Stalin cult.
But we also know he is in a dead end, who should come after him?

There are of course a lot of mostly young people who are sick and tired of all this, but this is not the majority, and they hold not enough power to change century-long prejudice and exaggerated patriotism.

But again, let's not bedevil Putin. He is after all a reasonable man, while with "reasonable" i do not mean pacifist, or pro-west. But he will be open for reasonable talk. He is much more dependable than China.
We just should not stop talking and negotiating, it will help all much more in the long run.