Yeah? Lmao if you go even slightly past western propaganda you can see that poverty has more than halved on his first tenure as president cuz he followed through with his academic paper on how Russia could recover from the USSR’s dissolution that he wrote the year before, increased the country’s purchasing power by 72%, GDP increased consistently, and he reversed the mass privatizations forced on Russia by the west in the shock “therapy”.

He has an over 75% approval rating and keeps getting elected in Russia for a reason: people have directly felt the massive improvement in quality of life under his presidency. It is decreasing in recent years though so he’s clearly starting to outlive his usefulness.

I’d recommend this book on the topic if you’re curious.