While he enriches his friends and creates a personal fortune that is one of the greatest of all times. They are OK with this because they except that they live in a corrupt nation? What does it say about it people when they have such differences between the the ruling class and the workers? Russia just excepts it because they believe for Russia to be strong they have to have a bunch of corrupt people running it? Heck almost anyone could run this Country and have success given these rules? They have oil tons of it and it seems there really is no trickle down economics going on it looks like because Putin is running an Oligarchy.
I don't speak for the entire nation, just offering my interpretation of a common consensus.
Russia never had a leader that wasn't corrupt; Yeltsin was only concerned with the fortune of his family, Gorbachev sold out to the West so he can float around in first world countries, Brezhnev was reported to be a rapist (having sex with young women that were summoned by KGB agents), etc.
In Western countries, the men that climb to power are from wealthy backgrounds or have lived in wealthy conditions.
It's easier to appear principled in a better organized state where you're more likely to be caught for bullshit and lack the experience of living in poverty and climbing out like a ravaged animal.
In Russia, every person that climbs to a top position can use the power as a means for selfish enrichment- because everyone else around them is also corrupt.
Also, since politics is mostly a contest between the rich- it is a contest between animals in Russia, since those are the type of men that become rich after being hungry, whereas rich politicians in the West were born rich.
There are no prestigious Bush or Kennedy lineages in Russia; every rich man is a dog that climbed out of poverty through a 'the strongest survive' mindset.
Many Russians expect politicians to be corrupt as fuck, it's just a fact of life and a probabilistic near-certainty in political science, especially in the social conditions of former communist states.
The best that the public can hope for is a leader who is corrupt, but understands that keeping the country stable is the bare minimum if he is to continue living in comfort.
Hopefully, in the next 20 or 30 years, a Russian John F. Kennedy will emerge from an Oligarch family.
Some young, idealistic Russian of privileged birth whose hope for humanity wasn't crushed by the rat race that every new money Russian has had to struggle through.
These are just my thoughts and my assessment of political life in Russia though.
I was born in a Russian autonomous republic and my family immigrated to the US when I was 8.
I returned home about 4 times in the last 14 years (I'm 22) for lengthy months.
I just graduated college with a double major in Economics and Philosophy, with a minor in Philosophy of Law.
One of my closest friends in college, who I knew all 4 years of attendance, is an international student from a rich Russian oligarch family.
It would be pretentious of me to call myself a Russian patriot (even though I still love my birthplace and my heritage) or to think that my childhood is enough to draw from to say that I am in touch with modern Russian living.
But I feel like my experience of growing up in the country and being familiar with Russians of different walks of life provides me with a good sense of national sentiment regarding these certain things (domestic and international politics).
I also learned a lot from reading Russian literature.
