I think it's helpful to keep in mind Russia's grand global strategy, which is simple and informs everything from supporting insurgencies, climate change deniali

I think it's helpful to keep in mind Russia's grand global strategy, which is simple and informs everything from supporting insurgencies, climate change denialism, election interference, etc. Putin has been in power for 20+ years and he'll remain in power until he dies (he's only 68). During this time, Russia has not seen great improvements as a society. For a few years in the early-to-mid naughts things were getting better as Russia was riding high on high oil prices and recovery from the dismal 90s. But this didn't last long - it all came crashing down in '08 and things have not recovered. Russian gdp per capita was the same in 2019 as in 2008. Covid killed masses of people which they've "cleverly" hidden with stats (it's not clever at all, you can just see the excess deaths). As the world shifts away from fossil fuels, their heavily oil-dependent budget is only going to get harder to manage. Politics-wise, any opposition figure will be killed if they become high-profile enough Things are grim and there's no realistic hope of things improving. For all their many, many, many faults, the soviets actually aspired to improve the lives of people. They ultimately proved inept at it, but they did believe they should and could improve people's lives. Putinism has no such aspirations. Instead the idea is to breed cynicism, fatalism and nihilism into people such that no one should ever expect anything better. To have hope, to act morally and ethically, to dream is to be a fucking idiot. Thus, Putin's MO is demonstrate to his people that the rest of the world is just as shitty as his Russia is. That no one is better than him, because everyone is a hypocrite, everyone is corrupt, everyone is a murderer. This worldview is very useful for many people in the West, hence the charges of "Russian bots" are not quite right. The scores of people defending Russia are not Russia bots, they're regular folk, they just find this worldview useful and want to import it. It's like the IRA and their trolls created a self-sustaining cycle.