If not Putin, it would be someone else serving the interests of the Russian homeland and Russian capital. If not that, given the fall of the USSR and the conditions after, it’d probably be someone serving the interests of the US international imperial interests and western capital (which would be far worse for everyone than the alternative). Ideally, we will one day see a resurgence of a communist vanguard in the region, but right now, Russia staying stable as an anti-imperialist counterweight is more important than bringing back local socialism.

So I see Putin as more a representative of the conditions than as someone to be overly preoccupied with as an individual. This isn’t to say he doesn’t have agency as some mechanical materialist view, but that if it wasn’t him, it would be someone acting similarly since the causes that result in someone like him go far beyond him.

The alphabet agencies would no doubt like people to condemn him from whatever angle works. But I am not interested in doing the tango with the CIAssholes. (I am not saying you’re in that camp, but thinking of narratives that try to vilify him in a variety of ways, playing on whatever cause might get people to hate him.) Russia is right now a force of anti-imperialism, whether it’s current leadership really wanted to go that route or was pushed into it by the west’s relentless desire for servitude, and being a force of anti-imperialism is better than it being a western puppet. I’m sure there are far worse leaders of nations, such as in the imperial core itself, so who am I to talk… I mean, if material conditions have improved under Russia’s current leadership overall, that’s already better than the declining capitalist west is doing for its citizens.