Americans have an especially difficult time understanding how different the Russian mindset and worldview is when compared to our own.
Putin doesn't have to consult the ACLU, Dershowitz, or CAIR to ask if it's OK for him to brutally crush and exterminate his Muslim upstarts.
Nor is he burdened with any semblance of a Western Christian conscience when it comes to alliances and treaties...he like all Russian leaders past, present, and future, will do exactly what benefits Russia the most, and he couldn't care less if it's Satan himself who is Russia's trading partner.
Unlike the U.S., the Russian's historical world view sees a time span covering centuries and centuries, multiple foreign invasions, famines, repressions, death by the millions of their countrymen, and a better understanding of "the Russian soul", as they themselves refer to it.
Russians themselves know that the only way they will ever be kept united and moving forward, is by brute force and an iron fist, in the form of a Peter the Great, Lenin, Stalin, Kruschev, or Putin.
One of their national sayings about themselves is "Always beaten; never defeated".
More likely than not we are at this moment witnessing the most "liberal" era in Russian history under Putin.