But this is the important thing all these guys miss or won’t talk about.
Putin is the ideal “strong man” that a lot of authoritarian leaders in other countries aspire to be. They look pro-Russian because they genuinely like Putin, like his ultra-right wing ideology and want to emulate him.
Modi, Bolsonaro, an important US politician whose name can’t be mentioned all fall in this group. They are not “Russian assets” like some claim - more like Putin fans. Alt-right propaganda in all these countries frequently use Putin’s image as approving of local leaders.
You can’t deal with Putin (esp his propoganda) without dealing with alt-right in all these countries.
Every society has a spectrum of political interest. There are strong adherents to any particular ideology and most of the rest are people who just lean a particular way and go with the flow to varying degrees.
Putin has been working hard for most of the last decade to get those people going with the flow more radicalized. Make people believe that the "other guys" are doing heinous things to gin them up. He was aided by a 30 year effort in the US on the right to do just this. Putin took it up a notch in the US and exported it to other democracies.
Whatever the political fault lines are in a society, his internet trolls have worked overtime to make them grow. His efforts have been equal opportunity, aiming at all ends of the political spectrum, but he has had a lot more success among right wing politics in most countries. There are left wing political followers who don't think about things (I know some), but modern left wing politics tends to have a higher percentage of people who think for themselves and manipulation doesn't work as well on them.
This has been an American trend, but I think it has also taken hold in some other country's politics: the right has been purging its intellectuals for 30 years. In the US both ends of the political spectrum had an intellectual class who discussed various ideas from their perspective. The right has become anti-intellectual and has lost its thinkers. There still are conservative intellectuals in the US, but they are generally outside the Republican party now. Some got shoved out for wanting to ask questions.
When thinking is discouraged, it becomes ripe ground for manipulation by someone who wants to drive the herd to their ends. Right wing media has been doing this for internal political reasons for a while, but Putin high jacked this process. He was at it before 2016, but it was 2016 when it became obvious. He's been infecting American politics and other country's (UK, France, Hungary, etc.) politics with his memes ever since.
The affiliation the politicians have for Putin is there. A number do praise him because they want to be him. A number do it because that's how they get elected in an environment flooded with Putin's propaganda.
If Putin does fall and the troll farms stop operating, or we figure out how to take them down I think we will see politics in a lot of democracies shift to a more rational footing as all the trolls quit doing their magic on the politically disinterested.
@wdolson the US is brokering the transfer of the Solvenian S300 air defense systems to Ukraine in exchange for Patriots based air defense. That's something I alluded to many posts ago. Far better to move s300 to Ukraine than to bring in US or British or French systems. Replacing the s300, especially in light of the "humanitarian air base" russia is trying to setup in Serbia is the critical hold up right now.
I was talking about the handful of Russian made air defense systems the US has for testing. The US and NATO will not be transferring any complex military hardware to the Ukrainians they don't already know how to use. The Ukrainians don't have the time to learn the new systems.
The US has very little of this hardware to transfer because all it has is stuff taken for evaluation.
After the war is over I expect Ukraine is going to convert to western hardware as quickly as they can get their people trained on the new equipment.
For a bit of levity
There is a whole thing the Ukrainians are going with soldiers and cats on Twitter.
