The clash of cultures. Russians treat law as something made just for a show. It is like "Any adult State must have Law, so Russian government learned them lette

The clash of cultures. Russians treat law as something made just for a show. It is like "Any adult State must have Law, so Russian government learned them letters from alphabet to write Law", but no one really bothered with Law, because if government employee decided to charge you, he'd find a way. If he decided to not charge you, then he wouldn't do it. There are incentives to not break law in an obvious and showy manner, because the government might see it as an insult, it might provoke it. No point to attract an attention of the government. But nevertheless if one breaks law without inflicting damages to innocent, he/she is a candidate to a title of a national hero. Government structures are not innocent by definition, people who exploit proletariat also are not innocent (though there might be exceptions). In a short it is a Soviet mindset rooted in a mindset of serfdom before Soviets. On the other side is European and American culture with the rule of law, which (from Russian point of view) naively believes that law has something to do with fairness. If Putin was a president of USA, he'd now made long speeches about intervention of wicked Russian culture attacking Traditional Western Values and diluting proud Western Academic Culture. And something about spirituality. And he'd made laws treating students with a prison for using sci-hub. Prison boosts spirituality and teaches to prefer spiritual over materialistic. Real USA presidents are not much fun in this regard. Even Trump.