Highly emotional opinions won't change overnight in terms of the cultural adoration of Putin. It was built up over decades of lies, fake projections of strength

Highly emotional opinions won't change overnight in terms of the cultural adoration of Putin. It was built up over decades of lies, fake projections of strength and promises of a better future for Russia. It'll take time to erode. Observers outside of Russia can rapidly change their estimation of Putin because very little of it is rooted in emotionalism, nationalism, cultural bindings - whereas for people inside of Russia the exact opposite is true. It's like the joke that half of the time spent in a failed relationship is on exiting it - that's because the emotional erosion can take a long time (whereas scientific, rational type estimations are more often very fast). Interestingly it was George W. Bush and an American war that provided Putin with his image foundation: high oil prices, sparked by the US debasing its dollar via outlandish spending (post 9/11 and up to the great recession crash), and the Middle East chaos including the Iraq invasion. Those high oil prices, which Putin had little to do with, made him look like a hyper competent manager of the Russia state, and he has been riding on the lifestyle improvements delivered to the Russian people from those good years ever since.