Dictatorship exists in varous forms. Russia has democracy though in bad shape. There various flavours of democracy. But what about total dictatorship in China has no opposition and many countries with theocratic monarchy.
Take for example France vs Russia. In the 2022 election, Macron managed to get just ~30% of the voters that wanted him as President. In the second round where only two options remained, only 58%.
Without any serious opposition (with the murder of Boris Nemtsov and jailing/deregistration of Alexei Navalny), the 2018 was again a landslide for Putin with 76.69% of the vote.
There are of course other easy ways to tell, but this serves as a pretty easy heuristic.
This is, of course, a gross simplification, of everything that makes up a democracy. For example, the US is at best a flawed democracy because of all the lobbying, money and gerrymandering (and things like the Electoral College).
Disclaimer: Not American, I'm a Kiwi, so outsiders view of US politics.
My bet is that they have a chance for democracy only when Russia becomes a set of little independent states. As Russia in a nutshell, is just a Muscovy that occupied other sovereign states. It was exactly like they’re trying it with Ukraine currently, again. Again, as the previous one was in 1918, when Russia ‘incorporated’ other states, what we know as ussr.
E.g. the Russian Comunist party leader Zyuganov have said many times that he lost the 1996 president elections in a fair way.