This shit is deranged on so many levels, I love it
An educated Marxist-Leninist such as Putin accepted that there had been more than 100 million victims of communism, an acceptable price to pay to remodel the world. He accepted the purges that Lenin and Stalin used to cement their rule, the forced famines that eliminated enemies of the state, the forced labor camps in Siberia, the tight control of all media. Putin studied the techniques of agitation and propaganda, applying them in his KGB assignment in Dresden in East Germany during the Cold War.
https://archive.is/4nZkS
https://twitter.com/NRO/status/1533851215624298497
i mean, hell, putin literally blames Lenin for the present crisis in Ukraine more than the United States. He basically views Lenin as having been naive for giving Ukraine parts of the Donbass region. He said "Lenin was a revolutionary, not a statesman." and refers to the invasion of Ukraine not just as "denazification" but also "decommunization." He views the Banderites in West Germany is being a product of Nazism, and he views the Russian separatists in Donbass as a product of Lenin's poor statecraft.