There is no reason to think that. Who would have been the better leader? Berezovsky?
You sound like a parody of boomer neocon who hasn’t learned anything new in the last 20 years.
I guess there was no telling what “could have been.” If anything, there may have been a few more years of struggle.
The real verdict is: the Russian people did not see freedom as worth the struggle nor did they understand what freedom means. The chaos of the 90s only revealed how corrupt and sick the prior system of communism was and utterly bereft it left its individuals to fend for any higher ideal otherwise. I’ve lived there. I’ve seen it. The new generation is obviously a different story and will release itself from the Soviet grip eventually.
In the meantime, look up male mortality/life expectancy alone and you’ll see how broken Russia has been these past few decades including under Putin. Not to mention the severe demographic crisis. Go outside Moscow and Saint Petersburg and you see how stalled much of the country’s development is.
Russia still has not recovered from the USSR collapse and neither has Ukraine or Belarus. Even the Baltic states like Estonia still struggle.
Putin’s interest was not to transition Russians to freedom but to keep them as comfortable as they are caught between two worlds. He revived much of the old older and installed an adjusted oligarchic capitalism meant to enrich himself and his chosen few. Lucky oil prices allowed for a decent middle class existence for many, but living standards have been on the decline for quite some time even before Western sanctions
To distract people from their dissatisfaction, he does things like annex Crimea and to return to people the sense of lost glory so many crave.
By the numbers, Russia should be lot more prosperous than it is, considering all the resources at their disposal, and all its strengths in STEM and the arts.
But there has been much cultural decay as well and its a myth that they’ve somehow been immune to the social ills that have prevailed in the West. Their HIV epidemic is at a tipping point.
But once the system changes, there is MUCH potential for true revitalization to take place.