The government has created an "authoritarian democracy" that appalls those in the West, but is popular with most Russians. The government has taken over most mass media, and uses that, and the police, to silence political opponents. Not a lot of violence (labor camps, executions, torture) like in the bad-old-Soviet days, but a dictatorship of sorts nonetheless. Russians still want their elections, and it appears that new autocrats will be elected, and accepted, as long as they keep the crime and corruption rates down.
I guess some people are too primitive and backward for democracy.
