Okay, so some people are saying wrong things and other people can't figure out why nothing fits together, so I think a quick rundown of Russian politics is in order.

1. Putin is a thief. (So are Yanukovych, Tymoshenko, Yushchenko, Kuchma, etc. - Russia and Ukraine are both kleptocracies, except Russia has enough money to keep the fire of populism burning and Ukraine doesn't.)

2. Russia is getting weaker, as more and more shit is being stolen. Yes, I have documental proof, if the public news reports of subfactions of thieves being ousted and replaced with other thieves are not enough.

3. You think (2) is wrong because Putin is a thief who's good at his fucking profession. He stays in power and gets to steal more shit in no small part because he's good at PR. Your own politicians use Putin's PR for their own ends (to scare you into submission with the spectre of Communism).

4. Rodor, from earlier in the thread, is a Nazi. If you want to make pronouncements on Russian politics, you would do well to remember Nazis are in the fucking opposition. They hate Putin.

5. You have no doubt heard about "the opposition" in Russia as if it was a single united faction. It isn't. The "opposition" you have heard of are an alliance of several right-wing factions assembled together by foreign agency like adventurers in a inn. There are more (right-wing) opposition factions which are not in the alliance and in fact hate it. However - the Nazis are in that one faction the West likes.

5a. There is no left wing.

6. Sanjuro is most likely a neo-Stalinist. Neo-Stalinists are not actual Communists, they aren't even brand-name Russian Communists. They are a rich and highly educated thinktank faction who have bizarre out-of-place unfounded Kantian beliefs; as such, they tend to be factually correct in political matters but lie when those beliefs demand that they do so. "There are no Russian soldiers in Crimea" is obviously a lie, but neo-Stalinists believe they should behave like professional diplomats.

7. When Western Ukrainians talk about Russia being nasty and dangerous in very particular ways, they are wrong, because of 1-3. Neo-Stalinists is a faction that actually embodies these concerns.

8. The sanctions against politicians do mean something to the politicians, however much Sanjuro would like to pretend otherwise. I remind y'all of the Magnitsky Act, to which Russia responded with "let's fuck over orphans". Everyone in politics is basically playing Jenga and knows that one day the tower collapses, they lose the subfaction war and will have to flee to the West with what they managed to steal and pretend to be unjustly fursecuted. And when they are b& from the West, they shit bricks. Neo-Stalinists sympathize with the politicians despite not being personally involved in politics, because they too like the West, what with being rich and educated.

9. Putin is a legitimate president by dint of being pretty much everyone's second-best choice. (He was an illegitimate prime minister and emergency president last millennium, because Yeltsin lost the 1996 elections - but, again, that was so long ago that some of you who are now talking politics were learning to talk fullstop).

10 Human rights abuses are a dime a dozen. But you know what? The West shares the blame, because all Western corporations that rank super high on various equality indices fully support and commit abuse here in Russia. And of course opposition factions support abuses directed against other opposition factions. People who whine about the sorry state of democracy in Russia would do well to remember that in whatever Putin does that you think is evil, he has the actual backing of an actual majority. That doesn't make it "not evil" or "the lesser evil", it means not everything should be up for a vote.