The Russians view democracy very differently than the west does. During the Soviet era the government line was democracy was the root of all evil. Then after the fall of the USSR Russia experimented with democracy for about a decade and that decade was one of massive turmoil and disruption. Then Putin came into power and ended the experiment, things got better, and people concluded that democracy must be to blame.
Today the Russian media highlights and amplifies any turmoil that happens in western democracies to enforce the message that democracies are unstable. Last winter they were telling lies about how bad things were in the western democracies with lines for fuel and food.
As long as most Russians believe the alternative to Putin is worse than Putin, they will put up with Putin.
Ukraine becoming more western was an existential threat to this narrative. A large number of Russians have relatives in Ukraine, so they used to travel there a lot. There was a lot of people moving back and forth between the two countries and a lot of cultural and information exchange. Zelensky himself worked in Russia for a while. To have a successful democracy with improving conditions that a lot of Russians visit would destroy the narrative that democracies are terrible.
A lot of the wealthier Russians did regularly visit western countries before the war, but they were more or less in on the scam and they didn't interact much with the poorer Russians, so the secret was safe.
