comments there are funny

"Putin hates Ukraine because he's jealous of their superior culture"

Dog... he hates Ukrainian supremacy and oppression of russian speakers. He's actually the more Liberal and "diverse" option in the Russian political landscape, in that he sees Russia as a federation of many nations and supports regional autonomy and multicultural acceptance. His parents were in the siege of Leningrad during the nazi invasion, he's lost multiple family members to ethno-supremacists. He hates that shit. Something westerners really don't understand. They want to support a color revolution in Russia, and they don't realize this could only be someone even more socially reactionary and sectarian. Putin's politics are considerably better than the median Russian I would say, and certainly better than the other major factions in Russian politics - the neoliberal compradors and the nationalist rightwingers.

He's more of a centrist between the two with a strong hint of old school machine politics from his days in the USSR and KGB, and that latter influence is what has made him so effective and stopping the bleeding of Yeltsin's looting and scraping back geopolitical sovereignty.