I'm not as positive about Putin as His Excellency.  Putin is ex-KGB and in bed with a lot of Jєωs over there.  I believe in the "Final Solution" scenario, where the fall of the Iron Curtain was staged to revitalize Russia economically in order to built it up militarily.  Putin has revived much of the Soviet symbolism and has pined for the good old days of the U.S.S.R.

With that said, he's certainly done a lot of good things ... encouraged large families, and encouraged the (albeit Orthodox) church.  He had a certain group of vile protesters arrested for desecrating a church.  He's also had a couple of highly-publicized affairs though.

AND ... most of all ... Russia has NOT been converted.

Final Solution comes from the famous defector Anatoliy Golitsyn.  He was a KGB defector who provided valuable intelligence information to the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatoliy_Golitsyn

He predicted the stratagem of making the iron curtain appear to fall about 7 years before it actually happened.

In 1984, Golitsyn published the book New Lies For Old, wherein he warned about a long-term deception strategy of seeming retreat from hard-line Communism designed to lull the West into a false sense of security, and finally economically cripple and diplomatically isolate the United States. Among other things, Golitsyn stated

Quote

The "liberalization" would be spectacular and impressive. Formal pronouncements might be made about a reduction in the communist party's role: its monopoly would be apparently curtailed. An ostensible separation of powers between the legislative, the executive, and the judiciary might be introduced. The Supreme Soviet would be given greater apparent power, and the president of the Soviet Union and the first secretary of the party might well be separated. The KGB would be "reformed."

Dissidents at home would be amnestied; those in exile abroad would be allowed to return, and some would take up positions of leadership in government.
Sakharov might be included in some capacity in the government or allowed to teach abroad. The creative arts and cultural and scientific organizations, such as the writers' unions and Academy of Sciences, would become apparently more independent, as would the trade unions. Political clubs would be opened to nonmembers of the communist party. Leading dissidents might form one or more alternative political parties.

There would be greater freedom for Soviet citizens to travel. Western and Unitized Nations observers would be invited to the Soviet Union to witness the reforms in action

I consider this to be highly plausible.

Putin pining for the days of the Soviet Union.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-politics-sovietunion/russian-nostalgia-for-soviet-union-reaches-13-year-high-idUSKBN1OI20Q

Russian nostalgia for Soviet Union reaches 13-year high

President Vladimir Putin famously dubbed the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century and he and many Russians have long lamented the blow its demise dealt to Moscow’s great power status.

If you design, perhaps, to become CI’s Russia expert, you’ll have to do better than this.

You don't have to be an "expert" to know about the things I cited ... you just have to not be an idiot.

Your slavish worship of Bishop Williamson really borders on the ridiculous.  I knew His Excellency very well, and was very close to him for a few years ... and I have a tremendous amount of respect for him.  But I do not have to worship him as if he were some divine oracle.  I disagree with a number of his opinions.  And he would demand and expect us to think for ourselves and not be ignorant lackeys.  You do no one any service by slavishly agreeing with everything they say.

Ladislaus hit on the crux of the matter... Russia has NOT converted.

And we can be sure, when Russia does convert, it will be a conspicuous, miraculous event, as when Our Lady of Guadalupe touched the hearts of 9 million Aztecs.

The traditionalist, revisionist history crowd realizes from revelations of WWII, that тαℓмυdic Jєωery through Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ, controls ALL the international leaders. 
Such as FDR, Churchill, Stalin, Tojo, Hitler and even "Ike the kike".

We live at the end of the 5th Age of the Church, where the world functions as a Jєωιѕн international stage. They write the scripts, engineer society and finance all wars.

We can only watch, pray and hope for the coming Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Apropos Hollingsworth's comment: seconded in both its assertions and its analysis.

Reacting to the several weak-tea replies to that comment, a person of sense might well channel his inner Clemenceau* in realizing, mutatis mutandis, that Internet research is to research what Internet romance is to romance.
_____________
* The allusion here is to a famous comment made by Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929), the sharp-tongued prime minister of France during World War I, usually rendered in English as "Military justice is to justice what military music is to music." In French, Clemenceau's comment was as follows: "Il suffit d'ajouter 'militaire' à un mot pour lui faire perdre sa signification. Ainsi la justice militaire n’est pas la justice, la musique militaire n’est pas la musique." [One need only add "military" to a word to make it lose its meaning. Thus, military justice isn't justice, military music isn't music.] Almost any CI thread might be deemed probative evidence that Clemenceau's remark requires only the substitution of "Internet" for "militaire" for it to justly characterize an all too plain present-day reality.

If, when and how another World War breaks out, is entirely in God’s hands, depending on what mankind deserves. But if God must punish us for our own good, all sincere prayer between now and then will help to mitigate the human disaster. It is the enemies of God on both sides who will really have caused it.

Amen. I agree with Bp. Williamson on this. We deserve much more and God has been very merciful. Either the Syria conflict or the North Korea issue could have easily broken out into WWIII or a military showdown between the U.S and Russia. Prayer can likely mitigate the chastisement that awaits us, and it's probable Heaven and Our Lady were active behind the scenes here to prevent disaster. 

I think Heaven's peace plan now would be something like an alliance between Russia and the West, against Islamic terrorism for example. The Cold war is over, and whatever we may think of Putin, most of the Russian people today have no sympathies for Communism by any means. If only the Pope and the Bishops would make the Consecration, Conversion and Peace would come quickly.

But man doesn't understand, as Our Lady has often said, that sins are the worst cause of evil upon earth, even worse than wars. When we sin obstinately, and especially when humanity denies sin is sin, and we call good evil and evil good, then we declare war on God. That's the first thing we need to change. Even outright war would be a lesser evil than continued persistence in defendinggrave sins like abortion, sodomy, blasphemy and more.

 I am not the greatest fan of Putin, but I think Russia has changed remarkably in the last 30 years or so. Many Russians are religious. A relative of mine who went to Russia recently told me the devotion of the common people in Russia to the Blessed Mother is quite strong. And even Putin's stated sympathy for Soviet union days may be mainly for economic reasons; I don't think he has any love for the earlier days of Gulags etc under Lenin and Stalin. Anyway, I believe it is phase 1 of Heaven's plan for the Russian people to return in some measure to Christian Faith and practice. Phase II will be the full conversion of Russia when the full Consecration takes place.