[Chad C. Mulligan]

That's utter bullsh$t. Nothing that is or has happen under Putin even comes close to comparing what has gone for the past four years in this country. Well, for the events since ~1980 I'm relying mostly on books by Timothy Snyder, who is a blindingly well informed historian of post-WW2 central Europe. Speaks five languages, reads ten, according to his CV. Been writing books on his subject for over 20 years now. Lives much of the time in Vienna, so he's close to his subject. Wrote Bloodlands which painfully documents what Hitler and Stalin did to Poland and Ukraine during the war, (not to neglect other victims like Belarus and Hungary). Waiting now on Amazon to deliver The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569–1999. But there's also James Heiser and Keir Giles and Faith Hillis and Michael Millerman who have contributed to my developing understanding of the Moscow/Ukraine conflict. So I can claim to be just a wee bit better informed of conditions in your home on the Volga than you pretend to be, even though I've never been farther east than Germany myself.

[Kazan]

So, you want to rely on what some author tells you is true about Russia, regardless of whatever bias he may have, rather than actually watching vloggers that live in Russia or who are American or Western expats that live there? That hardly is an enlightened way of learning about a country or a people.