I think many Russian people, especially those who watch or read mainly Russian news, hold such views with complete sincerity. The internal propaganda is quite effective.
I ran a small (1 mln pageviews/month) online Russian-speaking community since 2003 and since 2014, my main preoccupation are Kremlin bots.
The population in Russia is mostly anti-Putin, they just do not speak up, because the state made sure they feel isolated.
It was long believed, even in US, that Lukashenka had the majority. In reality, he faked all elections since 1994.
Once his deeds became hard to ignore even for pathetically peaceful Belarusians, all the population turned against him. Gosh, the exit poll in my voting station recorded only one vote for Lukashenka among 358. I was there watching the exit poll for a couple of hours. I fully trust the organizers, but one in 358... I could not even imagine it.
Same for Russia.
P.S. Yes, I have a Belarusian passeport. Yes, I run a Russian-speaking community site. Pass on.
I think he did rig elections but he might have had majority already, which makes his numbers look so unrealistic or he is just plain stupid to not even rig elections to make them look believable.
I do really sympathize with the Belarussian people though, every community should get a say on who represents them.
I am from Kazakhstan. If you've ever heard of it, would you consider it to be an autocratic state? Because according to the official results our beloved leader received 98% of votes in an election a few years back. Now that's an unrealistic number for sure.
https://www.alux.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/25-insane-cr...
You are assuming someone has an overview of the rigging being done. It's probably more chaotic than that. If 1000 different people are chucking opponents' votes into furnaces, how do you coordinate hitting that number?
He would if he wanted his quiet dissidents to feel isolated and his loud ones to be that much easier to find.
It's not that much different than other leaders declaring there are no gay people in their country.
That part is pretty well established by now.
Coincidentally, he established again a level of support a couple percentage points above Putin, who received "just" 78% last election.
Putin's approval rating is actually pretty high even when measured by NGOs sponsored by the "West". You'll be surprised, but it is quoted to be 60% in July 2020. [1]
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_image_of_Vladimir_Putin
1. The legacy of 8 decades under a government practicing public polling under a gunpoint.
2. Only the most well fed, and carefree Potemkin villages can be surveyed.
3. The lack of any other genuine option other than saying "I back a complete joke "alternative" candidates," which are set up by the regime itself to play Pope Gapon
4. Plainly faked polls
I am referring to polling agencies that are very west-leaning, and even they can't blatantly lie about it. His approval rating as of a month ago is 59-60% [1][2][3].
In fact his approval rating after the annexation of Crimea was at all time high of 85%. Check the sources. Again, these are not government-run polls.
Lots of good data on it (thanks to google):
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/putin-facing-growi...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/896181/putin-approval-ra...
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/05/06/putins-approval-ra...
And I am not saying Putin did or didn't order the poisoning of Navalny. I am just saying he is not the only one with motive/opportunity contrary to popular belief pushed in the mainstream media propaganda.
As to Crimea, plenty of Russians believe Crimea is Russian, including Navalny - the Russian opposition is neither monolithic nor does it always represent views that in lock-step with Western ones.
There’s a thing that you should understand about Russia.
Here it goes: Russia is a huge country and Moscow is only a part of it. A small and the richest part. Moscow is basically a country inside the country. It has almost nothing to do with Russia. And the overwhelming majority of the information you are getting is coming from Moscow only.
The polls, the internet blabbering, the protests happen in Moscow, mostly (do notice that I said “mostly” before calling me a liar. I’m well aware of the exceptions, believe me). All of the money is there as well - all the cash flow through the capital. All the money from regions flow through Moscow and only a small portion of it goes back.
People from Moscow mostly look down upon the people from the regions. Consciously or not. Some of them are outright aggressive towards the “country folks”. Many of them believe that Moscow is “feeding the regions”, and it should stop, because people there are lazy and not smart enough. I’ve had conversations like this with Muscovites during my life there, it was hilarious.
The rest of the country is concentrated on their own lives. The majority of them earn something around $300USD a month that barely allows them to live from pay check to pay check. Teachers, doctors, you name it. That’s the salary of low-skilled workers in Moscow.
These people realise that changing the president won’t help them, but in fact might make their lives miserable. And they are not wrong - I can only imagine what may start after the change of leadership and what consequences for the regions it might have.
This country has its roots in the USSR. The change in the headquarters won’t replace the people in charge in the regions - at least it won’t happen immediately. And if/when it does, the majority of the replacement would be just the same people from the same ruling party (or what’s left of it). That’s how things work in Russia, that’s how it’s always been, since 1917. That’s the system that we have. That’s us, Russians, who are the system, and the president is only a small part of the problem.
The majority of Russians either don’t use Internet or use it for social networking only.
The majority of Russians don’t have an international passport (the document that allows you to travel abroad). Why would they? They will never have the money to travel.
The majority of Russians that I know, people from outside Moscow, vote for Putin. Some of them do that because they support him and the ruling party, but the most of them (as per my personal experience) just believe that he’s a lesser evil. I can’t blame them for that.
There’s more to that. What I’m trying to say here is - Russia is far more complex and diverse than you guys might think. It’s not very obvious even for many Russians. So please, don’t downvote people who say things that are against your agenda simply because of that fact. Their reasoning might be more subtle than you think.
What you might want to do to better understand them is to ask them. They know better than you about the situation over there, the historical reasons and consequences. The only thing that you probably need to ask them first is where are they from. If they are from Moscow, chances are they are biased.
It seems that holding joint parades, signing secret pacts, sacrificing Comintern, etc, still did not help much.
Neither did appeasement. The correct response to Ribbentrop's suggestions was war on Germany, just like the correct choice at the Munich agreement was war on Germany. Beyond that, you're just choosing between bad options.
Why? Because they mostly watch Russian TV (those Russian WW2 serials are addicting). The propaganda in the Russian TV talk shows and news is very well done.
It is just like any other echo chamber. Just like watching Fox News,listening to Limbaugh in US, etc.
There are echo chambers for all political spectrums and all countries.
Why would it be surprising this might also be the case for many Russians, with an existing tradition of hostile international relations with the West, and more repressive and corrupt governments, especially when many Russians also felt a lot poorer before Putin arrived?
And your conclusion is to avoid politics with your in-laws, so you can stay in your own echo chamber. Well done...
Avoiding some topics in fear of insulting/upsetting other party, or in context of social media in fear of downvotes/flags, is the main cause of these modern echo-chambers.