There are growing calls for a mass boycott of the World Cup, to be held in Russia this summer .. https://www.express.co.uk/news/worl...-international-boycott-spy-nerve-agent-attack From the article .. Ian Austin, another Labour MP, said: “I am very concerned that Putin will use the World Cup in the same way that Hitler used the 1936 Munich Olympics, as a public relations exercise for a brutal dictatorship.” Brutal dictatorship ? Obviously, Mr. Austin has never been to Russia. I've been to Russia many times, since 2002, and I've never seen a "brutal dictatorship". In some ways I feel safer there, than here. Anyway. Russia is a vast country, whose citizens enjoy many freedoms they did not have under the USSR. Russia's cities are not unlike those in the US, in St. Petersburg, for example, there are lots of bars and night spots you can hang out. There also seems to be more of a community focus there. The upshot, I think Putin is going about it the wrong way. But the west is not giving him many options. There is a huge misunderstanding going on between the west and Russia. Surprisingly, Trump seems to be the only one that understands this.
There was a weekly TV program in former Soviet Union in mid-seventies, called "The Soviet Union in the eyes of the foreign guests" In that program the shrewd interviewers asked the regular western folks, the tourists, about what they saw and found in the Soviet Union and how those finding compared to what they heard about it in western press. And a lot of those western folks described what they found in terms similar to that you just used. The idea of the program was to show to locals that what they have is great , even in the eyes of the foreigners, and that its only the west's propaganda says negatives about beautiful life of soviets. Lenin used to call those foreigners (and similar to them) useful idiots. And he was right.
Putin is from what I gather from acquaintances who speak Russian at significant risk this election of losing. What is being said is a long way off the domestic reality. So he brings things to the brink of war, election over he backs off again. As Trump has removed the US as a credible threat to him it is a lot easier.
This whole anti-Russia hysteria is based on the euro/American globalist and political establishments recognizing that Putin and his brand of traditional nationalism represent a dire threat to their agenda. Their agenda increasingly seems to be one that is out of step with the interests of their own countries and dictated more by arab/muslim money. Most of western Europe now represents conquered territory for islam. Eastern Europe and Russian want no part of it and must be brought to heel.
In my own opinion, those who are complicit in the killing, or jailing, of their political enemies should, at the very least, not be respected. Putin is a man of great wealth. It would be virtually impossible for him to accumulate in one generation, even with skilled investment of assets, such tremendous wealth. This, at the very least, should give every honest Russian pause. Putin is Russia's problem. Trump is America's.
Trump doesn't understand much of anything other than where the money that saved his ass came from, and what's going to happen to him if he fails to do Purtin's bidding behind the scenes.
Brutal dictatorship sounds exactly right. I guess you haven't been badly treated in Russia as you're not a political opponent, nor a competing businessman, nor an investigative journalist, nor LGBTI, nor a female subject to domestic abuse, nor a Jehovah's Witness, nor Chechen, nor Syrian, nor Ukrainian. And you haven't tried to vote for an opposition party in what Russia laughably calls "elections".