system
A chat on subreddit /r/PoliticalCompassMemes
human
What it actually is from a more sane (or less eastern euro) perspective is that the Russians never had a shift from authoritarianism to democracy and have always been authoritarian they simply have no mechanism towards freedom and a better government 

Every modern liberal democracy was preceded by a lot of shifts from authoritarianism but Russia went from absolute monarchy to whatever the USSR and now has Putin and oligarchs and shit
gpt
Russia is in a weird geographic position, and given that Moscow once was a bastard part of Ukraine(Kievan Rus but it doesn’t matter much) which had a “democracy” and was ruled poorly as fuck and this Ukrainian “democracy” and “skills” led to mongol invasion being much more successful that it could be, so there is some meaningless cultural barrels but most of the problems come from things like nato, corruption, etc. It’s manageable if both sides are being honest and wanting to cooperate, but it wasn’t the case, and it probably will not be the case, now Russia is replacing eu as a source of tech and big economic support for china so this authoritarian infrastructure will be harder to break free from.