[roveo]

This is incorrect. Electoral rating of Putin (as of 2021) is around 30%. The central election committee will just declare the results that Putin wants.

People in the West who live in (relatively) democratic countries just go around saying "Russians elected him" without actually understanding what living under an autocratic rule is like. Putin never won a free and fair election. He persecuted his opponents, denied them access to media (and as of today, there's no independent media left) installed dummy ones that play into his hand and falsified the elections.

It's like seeing hunger in a 3rd world country and saying "why don't they just learn how to program and get an actual job?"

[jjgreen]

The electoral rating of someone outside an election is hardly relevant, it only matters on election day. On that day (in 2018) the result was (according to [1]), 77% (56M) in favour of Putin. The second candidate got 11.9% (8.6M). No doubt this guy is a narcissistic deranged dwarf, but are you suggesting he faked 48M votes?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Russian_presidential_elec...

[lupire]

Why do you think he didn't fake 48M votes?