Never fails to take me out when I hear know-nothing burgers talking about "if there were an election he'd have beat putler 2:1" and I'm just fighting the urge to start smirking like "oh, so the same margins that clinton was supposed to beat trump by right?"
In the minds of western libs, nations in what the west calls "the jungle" doesn't have a fully-fledged political system with differing ideologies and interests based in material conditions. Instead they just have a simple pro-democracy/pro-western Vs. pro-BadCountry/authoritarian divide.
Racist US backed stooge who got dooped into ending up in a Russian prison lol. IIRC he was advised to return to Russia to be sone kinda martyr by his handlers (he had no real mass appeal in Russia and he was being propped up as the 2nd runner up in power lol)