By the way, back then, in 1996, there were fair elections in Russia (at least, that's what they were called), but in the end, Yeltsin began to look for a "successor" (apparently, at the behest of a narrow circle of his "family", the oligarchs), which was unexpected for everyone, in order to protect himself from criminal prosecution, in case the new president wanted to put him in jail.
Then, as eyewitnesses say, these people found Putin, instructed him to carry out to collect all the assets of the Soviet Union around the world, and after that was done, a meeting was held in the person of 5 oligarchs, who at the end patted him on the shoulder and said "you're a good enough guy for us".
Putin kept his word, gave Yeltsin and his family immunity.
I personally think that Yeltsin and Putin were essentially the same people (Putin simply continued Yeltsin's work of plundering the country), it's just that Yeltsin was used by the KGB to transfer power, and Putin had already "secured" this position for himself.
By the way, some Russians (if not most of them) are also voted for Trump. They escaped fascist dictatorship only to make a fascist dictatorship "at home" (in the US).
I think, people from (toxic) collectivistic cultures are mostly uneducated and they don't realise what trauma/abuse did to them when they lived in their authoritarian (or democratic but poor and corrupt af) home country. Also, there is propaganda that is aimed, among other things, at Russians themselves abroad. And as the result, they continue to vote for such bastards who are capable of primitively manipulating people, even in democratic elections.
But again, I would not blame voters. In working democracy with respected rule of law though, there would be a way to remove those like Trump from office almost immediately or check the votes for possible manipulation. If Trump became president and the country immediately collapsed, then the question arises whether rule of law was fair before.