MLs tend to critically support the Russian Federation not because it's a former socialist state, but because of the progressive role Russia plays in undermining the western empire. Russia has been an ally to Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran, and is in general interested in a world where the US Empire isn't constantly boxxing it in and sanctioning it. This anti-imperialism isn't necessarily because Russians are more morally pure or anything, but out of definite relations to imperialism.

Besides what Cowbee said, the explicitly ML instance is Lemmygrad, and Hexbear is I believe broadly leftist, this instance is more generalist even if it does seem to be mostly commies here as well.

I'm not a fan of Putin but as long as the mainstream narrative frames everything around him as evil just because he goes against imperialism we'll have to put things in context and push back or else we miss the chance to remind people of the primary contradiction.

If it truly isn't about imperialism, then how come is everything bad about him okay to tolerate, ignore or even celebrate when the people doing it are compradors or imperialists?

If you have the awareness to understand where criticism of him comes from then participating in helping imperialism is dumb, and if you're itching to help imperialism leftist-y you're just the compatible left and you've been played.

We've seen empires tearing apart whole regions and butcher indigenous people and revolutionaries for so long at this point. Some of us know people who died in the last round of US backed regimes in the cold war. Some of us live in countries that were targeted even more recently than that by regime change operatives and the MIL. Let's stop ceding the ground to liberals with the memory of a goldfish and no political literacy.