[anovikov]

It's not a strong claim. He is absolutely a lot more popular. Popularity doesn't work in the same way as in the U.S., in the Orthodox culture where there is no concept of independent opinion: doublethink is innate.

Russian thinking is wholly totalitarian, in the good old Hitleresque sense (while ofc, Russian state is absolutely NOT totalitarian, it's just a soft dictatorship not unlike vast majority of governments in the poor world). Totalitarian thinking means that Putin is "us", i.e. government, State overall, country, nation, and society are the same, they are inseparable: most Russians could not explain how is "society" is different from "state", or discard the whole concept of "society" as Western weed. Rejecting Putin thus means self-rejecting. Very few people can even think of it.