Putin is very nationalistic. That can be good and bad. He stands by his convictions and takes shit from no one. For that I admire him. As for Russia and democracy I don't think that will ever happen in the true sense of the word nor do I think it will happen in very many eastern bloc countries. At least like we see it in the U.S. Lots of ethnocentric bias. More so than what you see here. Tribalism counts against democracy too. Also a bigger gap between the haves and haves nots. keepem sharp
The problem is that you looking at Russia by the eyes of people who got their major back in ColdWar era. They trained to see and represent Russia certain way.
Putin is not nationalistic - he has no problem to deal with other nationality like Chechens. He has excellent personal relation with Kadurov - who is Chechen and strong Muslim and in the top of one of the powerful Chechen's party - real power. This make peace in Chechnya almost instantly - majority of Chechens turn against insurgents. It is like if Bush will have excellent relations with Sadr... Which is different story...
Russia has real democracy - it is not like in communist days when results of elections was known already and set by communists. In Russian parliament there are all different parties, even communists who are in opposition to current government.
There is some step back - for example it turns out that to many local governor offices local criminal bosses were elected. Like in Vladivostok - former hitman blow up his opponent throwing grenade at him and so won election, taking control ower police etc. This happened all over Russia making situation shaky even more. Can you imagine Al Capone being governor?
So it was decided that governors will be appointed by president instead and approved by local Parliament, to prevent criminal who has power to came in the offices. Governor of Vladivostok was sent to jail, where he belongs... But all lower offices - majors etc are directly elected (as well as local parliaments).
They also remove "nobody" item from election ballots - somehow it does not comply constitution because there is no such person "nobody". Highest Court rules this. Not sure it is big deal for democracy.
But otherwise I do not see really any degradation of democracy in Putin's Russia.
It was several cases similar to Enron in Russia. One of this guy not only do not pay taxes but actually take millions of dollars as fake refund (from Russia which was already very poor at that time) - pretty neat schema. Of course he claim that he was democrat, because just before arrest he gave some money to some opposition party. And it was very welcomed by western press - they finally saw something familiar, they was trained for this kind of reports in their university years when it was USSR.
That guy was also very generous, he gave donation - he buys computers for poor Russian schools. He pay 50% of price and government pay 50% of price. Of course he buy this computers from his on computer company and make price 4 times, actually selling computers to government in twice price, making a lot of money with this "donations".
If someone like this will be caught with this schemas here - I will hear loud cry - "Russian mafia!". But if this happen in Russia - "bloody Putin's regime doing his KGB-thing again...". It is just a matter of training press has...
Thanks, Vassili.
No! For wearing KNIFE!