How bad is Putin and Putinism for Russia and how much worse Putin's oligarchs are than their Western counterparts? There are ways to find out. Putin's mafia is at least 10 times worse than what the West does to or for its own people.

As a matter of fact, there are some effective and relevant rough measures of how much worse the Putin mafia is with respect to Western standards/oligarchy. These are:

1) the ratio between Russian basic wages versus Western basic wages, which are now $100-200 to some $2000, that is, 1:10. The Putin mafia is roughly ten times worse. That'show much more the Putin mafia is robbing the people and the country and just extracting and destroying wealth and resources. By the time of the Moscow Olympics, the living standards were lagging behind those of the West, but the lag was not dramatic and not a multiple as it is now. Back then the USSR did not have and did not know poverty. But in 1980 (plus minus few years earlier), the "communist" Soviet leadership started putting the country to the rest--"putting it on a drip."

2) the difference between technological achievements and productivity in the West and in Russia: Russia as a scientific and technological power all but disappeared. Under Putin Skolkovo was to be his answer to the Silicon Valley. Skolkovo became another pit of theft.

3) the difference with respect to infrastructure. Under Putin, Russia's infrastructure is much worse and in worse disrepair than it was in the late USSR.

4) What the Western elites created versus what the Putin elite created. A lot versus the negative.

5) Western elites are at times and can be in fact very patriotic. The Putin command has been selected and filtered by Russia's most devoted enemies.

6) Putin himself is a concentrated symptom and symbol of the mafia, oligarchic, comprador regime to which he also gave justifiably his own name since he is its highest figurehead and certainly one of its principal stakeholders and thieving oligarchs. He is also one of its causes. Therefore, to change the system, its key symbol and official head has to go for that to happen or for Russia to have at least some chance and some future. But Putin's removal is not enough. It is necessary, but insufficient. The whole system deserves and needs to be replaced.

PS: Natalia Poklonskaya is anti-Soviet fanatic with very limited intellect, but with an assumed resemblance with Japanese cartoon sex symbols