Putin gets elected in roughly the same way that US presidents do. [Princeton & Northwestern] Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy
Putin actually is popular. Russians have good reason to like him: he kicked the Western capitalist neoliberal shock therapy plunderers out of the country. It’s still a capitalist shithole, but at least it’s their shithole and not a neocolonized state anymore.
All you’re doing is repeating your assertion without adding anything, and the assertion you’re repeating is the the one you received from a lifetime of Western capitalist Cold War propaganda, and I don’t think it’s ever occurred to you to question it.