An accolade from Hillary Clinton would'nt change my day. either way.

William of the USA What is freedom? You say you don't know much about Putin and suspect he is not a supporter of freedom and self determination. Freedom costs money. Poor people are not free. In times of problems then freedom needs to be limited. It happens everywhere. In the US after 11/9 freedoms were drastically changed and limited in the interests of the situation. In Russia, since they have been a democratic country they have had to deal with economic hardship as bad as the great depression was for the west last century, and the breakup of a republic that had an effect on industry that was in many ways comparable to the Nazi invasion of 1941. Companies that made products suddenly found their factories were in a new country, or the design bureau was in another state, or the vast majority of components they use to build their product are now made in different countries. Particularly those countries that want to join NATO are suddenly hostile to Russia because Russia is the Soviet Union... just like Britain is England and the US is Washington DC. In a nut shell Russia has lots of problems and human rights are not high up on the list because there are a lot more problems that need to be dealt with before such niceties need attention.