Obviously our leaders are better. Our standard of living is higher, our life expectancy is 10 years longer, and our 20-year olds aren't dying in a meaningless war.

Putin's leadership is so atrocious that he's bad even by the standards of Russian leaders. No need to watch the news to come to this conclusion, just look at the numbers. All Russian statistics point to a society in decline, held afloat (briefly) by high oil prices, and unable (under present leadership) to reform itself.

All those conditions existed prior to sanctions and are basws on russias own figures. Why are you arguing in bad faith? There are legitimate arguments to be made if you can cool it and consider them.

The numbers are reported by the Russian government. It is plausible that the true numbers are worse, but unlikely that the Russian government would want to intentionally project economic and demographic weakness.

As for sanctions, they were instituted in response to Russian aggression. If Russia had left its neighbours in peace, Western countries and especially Germany would have happily continued liberalising trade.

You may want to consider that you might have your own issues with listening to propaganda. The sanctions introduced between Russia’s invasion of Crimea (also Putin’s fault) and 2022 were fairly anaemic.

Like, it’s really hard to come up with a scenario where Russia’s current crisis is _not_ Putin’s fault. Putin was there in more or less everything that lead to it. Whose fault did you think the sanctions were, if not Vlad’s?

Ah, er, yes, I think most people outside of Russia, and many in it, think that most European leaders are better than Putin.

Most European countries haven’t killed off 0.2% of their population over the last 18 months in a pointless, doomed war driven by their leaders’ personal vanity, for instance, so there’s that. At this point, Putin’s ridiculous project has killed nearly as many Russians as covid did.