In a word, no. In a few more words, support for Russia (not Putin, as historical materialists don’t subscribe to great man theory) is only a partial, temporary, tactical one, in the context of imperialist liberation. Russia is still a capitalist state, though, so it’s a two stage strategy: first liberate colonized bourgeois states from colonizer states, and second revolution within those liberated bourgeois states.

Russia is an interesting case: it has already liberated itself from the post-Soviet “shock therapy” neocolonizers. This occurred during Putin’s administration, which is why he is especially hated by the US. So now the support for Russia is in the context of keeping the colonizers from recolonizing it, and supporting Russia to the extent that it helps other states liberate themselves. But Russia isn’t trying to “liberate” Ukraine, at least not all of Ukraine. It’s trying to resolve the genocidal attacks on the people of the Donbas, and it’s trying to resolve the imperialist military expansion at its border.

• Robert Parry, 2015: The Mess that Nuland Made
• Jeffery Sachs, 2023: The War in Ukraine Was Provoked—and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace

Hardly; I've never known actual communists who uncritically supported that man. It's always critical support, at best-- which is to say, he may do some things correct, but he's still an absolute affront to what came before, and honestly a problem Amerika themselves created. Advocating for wanting to kill a man in the midst of denazifying a NATO-backed neighbor, out of self-defense from NATO encirclement though; that's beyond the pale, as is everything else I've found regarding that member's carriage.

You don't need to support Putin to be a Marxist, him and Russia are deserving of a lot of criticism, but it's maybe a little suspicious if someone sees everything happening geopolitically right now and consistently chooses to focus their anger towards Russia.

To be honest when I read Supavillain's quotes my first reaction was also 'So they don't like Russia, who cares?", Ukrainian national identify exists, if Russia annexed western Ukraine they wouldn't be able to erase it. Non-principled populist politicians do always suck. And Russia would've loved (I assume this is about) Donetsk PR to have been their puppet.

But then those last two quotes are pretty bad. Killing Putin or even having Putin do a 180 wouldn't change anything. He'd just be replaced. And the poor countries are no less civilised.