To my eyes Putin is no more, and no less, a fascist than the US Government, taken in toto, as it were.
Sure, the US government can still theoretically be made to bend to suit the "people" rather than the financiers' & industrialists' interests... but the safeguards in place to prevent that occurring are many and varied and, on the whole of late, entirely effective.
Putin's Russia, meanwhile, is a newcomer to the imperialist stage... the interests that he represents have neither so elegantly crafted a stage-show of "democracy", nor so repetitively marketed a "mantra" of "freedom", as has the US and its orbit of Western Powers... nor have they so thoroughly developed their industrial and/or financial infrastructure, let alone their global military presence.
I can't argue that criticism of Putin isn't legitimate. I would, though, argue that the casual tone of your criticism suggests that you fail to see that- everything that you are criticizing Putin & his government for being, the US and EU are as well... the latter are just so much more practiced and PR-savvy about it that one often falls into the trap of believing their PR-glitz and failing to see that Russia, as it stands today, is merely another nascent imperial power... the same as the old ones.
What you are calling an "accurate description of Putin, his government, and his policies and actions in Ukraine" ... is really just a regurgitation of the PR-spin being used by the "Big Players" to besmirch the "Upstart New Player"... and that spin creates an intellectual climate among those who choose to ingest it in its entirety which legitimizes whatever "Power Play" economic &/or military actions the said "Big Players" may eventually choose to employ against said "Upstart".
Your matter-of-fact use of that particular set of talking points, with no sign of any questioning included in your choice of diction, suggests that you are, in fact, helping to "set the stage" for whatever "action" the US, EU, and their orbit of client states choose to try to spin as being "lawful", "just", or whatever ... but whose real intention will be, or rather continue to be, action intended to blunt any attempt by this new would-be-imperialist-power, Russia, from attaining any leverage that might allow it to, in any significant way, compete with the imperial powers that have already divided the resources of the globe amongst themselves.
All of that said, however, I would have to concur... "He is hardly a progressive Socialist."
His not being a socialist, however, doesn't mean that progressive socialists are required to digest and regurgitate on command the talking points of others, especially when they are neitherwise "progressive Socialist"s.
... but perhaps you have some new nugget of wisdom that will elucidate how much more horrific the figurehead of the new would-be-power is than the old, familiar figureheads of the old, familiar, and nigh-inescapable powers-that-be?
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