Can you please define Putin political view in short?
I happen to remember USSR collapse, then the awful years of Yeltsin, when everything went to hell: economy was dead, crime rate went through the roof - there were shootings every day on the streets, suicide rate went through the roof, population started to decline because people didn't want to have children (or didn't have means to raise children), millions were starving to death. And I remember how this started to change almost the next day after the first election of Putin. No more street shootings and businessmen cars explosions. Corruption started to wither (and continues to this day). Not only old buildings stopped to deteriorate, but new buildings, roads and bridges started to appear everywhere.
In short, just about every metric you can measure started to improve under Putin's rule. Except maybe some "freedom of speech" which is almost unimportant to me. I remember that "freedom of speech" was used to calumniate Russian past and present in 90s, I don't remember a single good thing caused by "freedom of speech" in 90s. Bunch of freaks were allowed to speak on TV and other media, what they said caused only strong negative emotions in everyone. It was obvious that it had nothing to do with making our life better.
It is interesting that you talk about different metrics and different words meaning different things to Russians compared to those in the west. If we can't use "left" and "right" as descriptors, and you don't place much emphasis on "freedom of speech", what _are_ the values that you think are important? (I suspect, from what you say, even "freedom of speech" means something different to you than it does to me)
As for left or right I would label Putin as right inclined centrist.
Now, West suddenly become very concerned with Putin's alleged wealth (nobody had seen it) - why? Why Putin's wealth is more important than Yeltsin wealth? Why current level of corruption which is measly compared to level of corruption during Yeltsin times had become so extremely important to the west? Why it didn't bother anyone before?
What is important to me: being able to live normal life: have a job, have access to medicine and education for me and my family, having enough food on my table to not starve. Less important but nice to have is enough income to travel somewhere for holiday at 1-2 times a year. To have friends and family. To not have war in my country (which is US currently actively pushing as well - they hope to force war between Europe/Ukraine and Russia because that will be very beneficial for US economy and US being separated by the ocean will not experience the devastating effects of the war on its own territory).
I do not believe that democracy exists anywhere or even actually possible. I do not need some kind of "free speech" whatever that means. I like to blog, but I seriously doubt my blog would cause any problem in any society. I'm definitely aware that blogging in the US is more likely to create problems than in Russia.
In Russia nobody cares if you're rude or politically incorrect or you have contradicting political views. Many of my friends do not support Putin unlike me - that doesn't ruin our friendship. Whatever I write on my blog will never put me in trouble in Russia, even if I'll write "I hate Putin, he's a crook" - nobody cares despite what you may read in western media. In Russia I can write or say: "BLM" or "All lives matter" and I won't have any problem at my job or with the police or with anyone. In the US there's only one approved view that you can openly support, otherwise you're destined to have problems, e.g. you can be fired from your job and become homeless if you don't agree with your latest election results or don't support some SJW movement or you support it but not in an approved way.
With regards to tensions around the border with Russia and Europe, Putin is firmly seen as the aggressor from here, especially after the annexation of Crimea. To us it seems that Russia is testing the water, with the full knowledge that essentially everyone in Europe wants to avoid an outright war.
You say that you can blog freely without consequence in Russia, but I wonder what the effects of publicly disclosing e.g. homosexuality would be? The impression I have is that it would be analogous to admitting to racism in the US or Europe.
I do appreciate being able to have a reasonable conversation with someone who literally sees the world from a different angle to myself!
I guess nothing will happen. It's not like homosexuality is persecuted in Russia. I've seen several times people openly admitting their homosexuality in public with no consequences. It's explicitly prohibited to "promote" homosexuality, whatever that means. Though I've never seen or heard anyone being prosecuted by this law.
I assure nobody wants a war here. From here it's seen as USA aggressively trying to push Ukraine to start something stupid like trying to take Crimea back by force. Ukraine is not a sovereign country, it's under external control and they have a very little choice. Their economy is unviable, and I guess US gives them a hard choice: either you go to war with Russia or the flow of credit from the West that allows you to feed your people will stop.
We don't need Ukraine at all. It's useless for us, it's useless for Europe. If we'd captured the Ukraine (and I'm sure that would be easy), we'd have to feed the big population that can't feed themselves and about 50% of that population also hates us to guts. Everybody understands it, including Putin. Why waste resources feeding big ungrateful population if you can offload this problem to Europe?
USSR tried to feed too many hungry mouths: Georgia, Asian republics, Baltic Republics. USSR built infrastructure: schools, hospitals, industry in those countries. They were prosperous during Soviet times because Georgia for example, consumed roughly 10 times or more money its economy generated. The difference was covered by RSFSR (Russia). Only to hear after USSR collapse that we were oppressors. Nobody is going to make this mistake again. Nobody wants to take back Georgia or Tajikistan or Estonia or Lithuania. Let them care about themselves, we better spend our resources to make our life better rather than trying to buy loyalty.
So, I highly doubt Putin have any desire to start a war. It's not beneficial to him or to our country at all. It would be highly beneficial for the US, though.
The message I'll take from our exchange here is that what you and I know to be true is a result of the culture and media that we've been exposed to throughout our lives, and that objective truth is hard to determine, even for well educated people. Less well educated and informed people stand little chance of discovering the true-truth in this environment.
All the industry was destroyed, especially after the coup of 2014. Agriculture remains, but EU sets a tiny quote for Ukrainian exports. So maybe Ukraine could produce and sell more agricultural products, but they can't sell them because EU quotes are exhausted usually within the first month of the year.
Also, agriculture isn't so simple. It requires huge amounts of hydrocarbons for fueling agricultural equipment (tractors, harvesters, etc consume huge amounts of diesel for example). You also need fertilizers and other chemicals. Ukraine has to import all that.
Also, Ukraine is hostile to Russia so we don't want to import anything from them and law explicitly forbids many ukrainian imports. But EU also has its own industry and its own agriculture and they do not need one more competitor on its market. For example, after 2014 sanctions, when Russia stopped importing many articles of food from EU, many agricultural companies of EU started to experience difficulties. E.g. meat producers in Czech Republic. EU needs to give work to its own citizens, why would they open the market for cheap competing products from Ukraine? So that more EU producers go bankrupt? Not going to happen.
Fine then, if money is enough to make this basic right unimportant then we're definitely not on the same page.
It's not much different from what happens in places like Dubai.