I guess that it is not easy for outsiders to notice this since Putin had oppose Western imperialism instead of imperial alliance with superpower to oppress the global south. Putin had also tried peace talk with Ukraine government for 8 years on the Ukraine attack towards Donbass citizens as punishment for the Ukraine rebelling states which provides justification for Putin’s military intervention. The pro-NATO fake news recently boosted that it successfully drive Russian force from Kyiv and this could be a secret message of “Putin had neutralized Kyiv military capability to attack Donbass citizen and so Putin will now leave Kyiv in peace”.
That concerns the definition of dictatorship. The Liberals had redefine dictatorship in modern America to associate it with absolute power and make a fake history on school textbook with the “what-if 20th century Communist follow the American Liberal redefinition of dictatorship”. “Dictator” in Russia can mean a leader who is under the rule of law, check of power from independent government department, and accountability to the working class.
That will depends on whether they can deceive the people and whether they can evade the consequence of their cheating. Conservative elites like Donald Trump have negative relation to the more socially liberal metropolitan elites and will appeal to conservative white rural populations in their choice of words and phrases. As Capitalism in practice is government intervention for the rich, they will try to spread misinformation via the news and school textbook to keep the poor misinformed and manipulatable.
Does that have to do with the superhero colonial obsession in first world countries where people who face failure in their home country think that they can rebuild their social status with national war against some imaginary villain mastermind in another country? It is ironic how the average Americans think that they are special hero who act against the collective hivemind when they are a collective hivemind of bystanders who blindly believe in every lies in the fake news.
I am listing several separate points. For Trump, he gains support from the rural population because the rural population either mistrust the Neo Liberal news or interpret the news differently to create unintended positive opinion of Trump. The fake news stop Trump from depending on metropolitan population or immigrants.