Your descriptions make a lot of sense, and I'm glad to see I wasn't wildly off base. Maybe, although I think it's more a perspective that says "there are no good options, so rather than trying to find the option that helps us the most, I'm going to find the one that hurts us the least." Speaking of machoness and homosexuality, I actually wrote a brief paper in college (that I'm sure is lost to the mists of time) about how HIV/AIDS was getting really bad over there. As I recall, it was a combination of things: Russia being a transit point between East Asia and Western Europe, and IV drug use. But supposedly (and you may be able to confirm this), part of the reason it was spreading so much was that it was still seen as a "gay" disease, and so people just wouldn't deal with it. Random side question: is голубой still used as a slang (and not very nice, as I understand it) word for gay people? Fun random fact related to my random side question: I cannot confirm this is true, but when I took Mandarin in college, we were taught that the Mandarin word for comrade, 同志 (tóngzhì), is used as a derrogatory word for homosexuals in Taiwan. Not especially favorable. I would say that he's seen as callous, corrupt, and amoral.How would you describe that? Is it that Putin sees Russia as ultimately a failure and tries to suck it dry (along with the other oligarchs) before it's done?
What about Putin? What's the attitude towards the man himself and/or as the leader of Russia?