A Russian dev I knew mildly supported Putin, but he was in Canada to do dev work due to limited opportunities back home. We talked about Putin grabbing VKontakte and corruption etc..
They guy was very smart but the cognitive dissonance of him not realizing that Putin is literally the 'King of Corruption' that essentially supports and enables all of those terrible things is literally why he had to leave Russia.
But as long as 'Putin is Strong' (or appears to be) - they like him.
I've lost a lot of respect for Russians since 2010, in much the same way I lost a big chunk of respect for many Americans during the Trump era. It's one thing to be 'pragmatic' and accept Putin as the 'lesser of other evils' or to not understand business and therefore believe that Trump is a 'genius businessman' ... but it takes just a tiny bit of self-awareness to see past the stupidity.
Putin is extremely corrupt, not directly tied to the Mafia but essentially it's under his umbrella because he enables it.
If Putin was an actual 'Patriot' he would be viciously going after corruption, instead of just mouthy oligarchs and murdering journalists, he'd be putting top corrupt officials in jail and trying to transform the dour expectation that Russians have that their 'Leaders are Corrupt and That's The Way It Is'.
The fact that a leader can almost openly murder opposition opponents and journalists, and intelligent, educated people just believe the propaganda is staggering.
I had dinner with a nice, educated Russian girl who seemed surprised when I illustrated to her all of the shenanigans of corruption at the Sochi Olympics, as if it was the first she had heard of it.
It's understandable that uneducated rural people with no access to information buy into propaganda. But it's unacceptable that urbane, educated, Russians support that guy. They'll reap what they sew - the same goes for everyone else.
I have team members stuck in Belarus, they're pragmatic about it. Lukashenko doesn't have hugely popular support but I'm feeling that Belarussians are more chill than Russians. They're also pretty much ethnically Russian, so there's that and the economy is naturally tied to Russia.
It's feeling a little bit like 1985.