Russia is absolutely a dictatorship. They just rigged their most recent election (jailed the leading rival politician and banned apps that informed people on how to use their vote strategically to minimize Putin’s party’s power).
As for "rigged elections" all the US elections in the last 50 years were rigged as well - think about gerrymandering and deliberately blocking black and Latino minorities from voting (by making it hard for them to obtain proof of identity, or making them wait hours in line at the polling stations).
"Dissident" is just a critic of a policy or regime. It doesn't improve Russia's hand at all to say that it only assassinates critics, and it certainly isn't an exclusively US-held position that Alexander Litvinenko, Boris Nemtsov, Alexei Navalny, etc were critics (as opposed to bonafide violent terrorists).
As for "America labels its critics as 'terrorists'": can you name any critics that the US labeled "terrorists" and consequently assassinated, especially on EU soil?
There's no evidence that Putin is related to death of these persons. BTW, Navalny is alive and well and all the evidence shows that he was probably "poisoned" by the CIA to create another "victim" of Putin's regime.
Besides, Navalny is a terrorist on CIA payroll. He's working on destroying Russia from within. He was recruited and trained abroad and most of his "donations" are coming from western governments and spy agencies. Nobody trusts him here.
Also, Germany had provided him with studio and equipment to film his last propaganda movie and YouTube promoted it very aggressively (no other YouTube clip was ever promoted this aggressively - it was starting automatically for almost any person in Russia that opened YouTube).
Yeah, that's a conspiracy...
Think cheer leaders.
And we are the best cheer leaders ever, or fanbois, ankle-biters.
Things which come to my mind are [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Khodorkovsky ,
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ai_Weiwei
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yulia_Tymoshenko
(Miraculously healed from her excruciating back pains
due to rough handling by the magicians of the
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charit%C3%A9
does this ring a bell, Nawalny, Charité, yes?)
All greeted by politicians at the Airport when they arrived here, by whichever diplomatic means.
And now that Nawalny thing. Which somehow stinks.
The same way the Skripal thing stinks.
Though I don't know what to make of Litvinenko, that stinks different.
One could even go further back to
[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camp_Hale &
[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Tibetan_program in the context of
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_influence_on_public_opinio...
and wonder why we have so many buddhist organisations here?
I'm not saying that there aren't any other parties playing similar games here and elsewhere, that would be unlikely.
It's just the endlessly repeated and obvious BS, which is so ridiculous.
Most recent example is some nobody who suddenly popped up as 'the hope' of the german green party,
pushed by media, talking empty phrases in interviews, lied about credentials/qualifications, got caught,
didn't matter, media pushed harder.
[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annalena_Baerbock
Media said boo! Fake-news! Uhhh... why?
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claas_Relotius
[10] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttenberg_plagiarism_scandal
[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annette_Schavan
[12] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silvana_Koch-Mehrin
[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franziska_Giffey
and so many more.
We (traditionally) don't like fake it till you make it. That goes against our (percieved) sense of order! :-)
Anyways, back to that Gazprom vs. Germany topic. This is all non-news, noise, pushed by either brain-washed,
or at least uninformed people, or outright liars, having an agenda.