Funny that i just finished watching a documentary/journalist report on Russia's evolution during the last 10-20 years.
Putin is no saint, but despite his iron grip he usually enjoys an approval rate of 70% or so. Let's assume this is somewhat doctored by his control on Russian media, it still is way above 50%, way higher than what state leaders in most western countries have.
When dealing with a foreign country, you should first attempt to deal with the prevailing sentiment of the people who live there and their culture and background. If you look back in history you'll see one thing about Russians, they support powerful leaders, not necessarily fair but powerful ones.
They endured the Czars, then they installed a communist/socialist government model through a revolution that still had an iron grip on things. After that, they tried a western model and all hell broke loose, but finally they more or less settled for a compromise...they still have a Czar/Party Premier it's just that they vote him themselves. They choose their own tyrants (in the ancient Greek sense, which means a single ruler but not hereditary like a King) and they seem content to do so. If that's the way they want to be governed, who am i to tell them otherwise?
You can't force democracy on people, because forcing anything on anyone is as far from democracy as it gets, ie you become a "democracic-fanatic". If the part in quote marks sounds ridiculous and contradictory to the extreme, it's only because it is that ridiculous to believe you can make people like democracy by force.
If the majority didn't like it trust me, they would have done something. If nothing else, they've shown through history that they have a tremendous capacity to resist and overcome whatever comes their way, not only as a whole but individually as well.
Maybe the Russian mindset is not suited to a western government model. I know a lot of Russians because many of them moved to Greece 10-15 years ago and live here permanently. One thing i can understand about them is that they don't care as much about what they get, but what they have to do to get it. They are headstrong, they can party in a frenzy like nobody (to the point that's scary, if you've seen a drunk Russian you fear nothing afterwards
), but most of all, they are very proud people, extremely fair if you show them respect and prepared go to hell and back for someone they respect or something they value.
They might even be good people that do bad things or bad people that do good things, because they live by a code that's vastly different to our own. And what's most important to them is their sense of pride and their code, to the point that many are willing to sacrifice personal freedoms to preserve their values.
There were two kinds of people that spoke against Putin in that documentary. One is the group of businessmen who effectively stole Russia's natural wealth. The people who agreed to support Yeltsin in exchange for erasing their loan debts, the same loans they used to buy every oil and gas company in the country. Those are upset because Putin hunts them down.
The other group are ordinary civilians, mostly poor people, the ones whom we would suspect to be prime supporters of democracy. Well, these guys, the beggars in the streets of Moscow, the unemployed, these guys said "Stalinist times were bad, but after him it was better than it is today, especially 60s and 70s." These guys considered the communist model preferable to a western style "democracy". They have tried a bit of both, we have not, so even if i don't consider myself a communist, i can't help thinking they might have a point due to experience alone.
As for the defensive missiles, it's not about defense per se. It's about the possibility of one superpower to negate the single most efficient doctrine of the previous century, one that was called "MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction" and kept us all from blowing eachother to bits.
Let's see a recent example. When Cyprus bought S-300 SAMs from Russia, the US and UK were happily whistling along while having full knowledge of the fact that Turkey was making plans to attack them in transit. They even stated in public that they would attack a EU candidate (at that time, Cyprus is now in EU proper) and risk a war with another NATO country (Greece namely) and still nobody lifted a finger. Those missiles negated much of their air superiority advantage in the event of a conflict and subsequently, their political leverage (in layman's terms, it lowered their chances for a successful blackmail attempt). In the end these missiles were not deployed to Cyprus, but Crete instead.
Now, the US is planning to install a system that will severely curtail Russia's nuclear deterrence capabilities. Not a few SAM sites that will target some stray Sukhois, but a system that will make it possible for the US to launch against anyone with total impunity, and hence total disregard for non-american human lives as their track record has shown, but on a scale so far unseen.
Russia doesn't care about Iran because Iran won't attack them. A lot of European countries care but don't necessarily fear Iran, because they are not the ones who've been bombing middle eastern countries during the last 10-20 years (if we include all incidents and not just full blown wars).
What will change for Russia and that part of Europe if the system gets deployed is not an added sense of security against possible Iranian ICBMs, because the chances of seeing one come our way is slim anyway.
Instead, it's the increasingly troubling thought of the US gaining a "get out jail free" card a la Monopoly that worries us.
Sorry guys, but due to your track record ever since the end of the cold war we have more reasons to fear your president than the Mulahs in Tehran. If there really is a reason we should fear them, it is due to the actions taken by your administrations when they lump us all in their west vs east crusade without asking us first.