Your point does not contradict mine, unfortunately. He was and is popular. Maybe a little less so now, but he would win fair elections now, I think. The line many people in Russia take is “he is the only one who could take us out of this mess. Without him the country will collapse”. And there are, of course, a lot who wholeheartedly support his imperial ambitions, just like there are plenty of magas in the US.

A lot of people had this attitude in Russia. Let the evil guys run the country to the ground, and then rebuild into a better structure. This will happen, I think, the only problem is that can take decades and millions of people dead in the process. No suggestions here, just a note…