Thanks for the info.

Culturally they appear to favor authoritarianism, nationalism, and strong man mentality in their politics.

Yeah, while I understand that there is an element of that that's uniquely Russian, I mean that was also much of the world for much of history.

But like you said, no easy answer.

And yeah obviously the people I interact with outside of Russia will give a different perspective. I just always got the vibe from them that a large portion of the population resented Putin, but apparently that's less of a vibe than I thought.