After events of last 4 years in Russia you can probably be killed there for $100 or for a wrong look. Lots of trigger happy ex-convict veterans with PTSD are around.
For now they are busy killing their wives and relatives, but eventually they will run out of money for alcohol and will have to find a "job".
I find it weird to defend Russia but you seem to be missing couple things. most importantly - it's not homogeneous, not even a republic. there's around 190 ethnic groups and ~40 officially recognized separatist groups. and that's important because it skews national narrative, mandates harder punishments and corruption as a crutch. when the media follows "99% heroic bullshit, 1% truth" scheme, it's somewhat challenging not to ignore politics - you get bored of it
I was born in Russia and lived there good chunk of my life. I agree it's not that simple and it took two decades to turn the country into whatever it became now.
When country is already turned into authoritarian military regime there is obviously no way to turn back to democracy by political actions alone.
Yet back in 2006-2016 it was still possible to turn things around if enough people cared. Unfortunately majority of population was happy to ignore politics and now everyone pays the price.
i realized that after commenting. which is bit awkward - I'm not in a place to school you on such topics so take that as a look from neighboring country. would like to add that in modern days democracy is endangered by media manipulations and faked crowd opinions.
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