Yes, ordinary Russians approve of having an autocrat rule them. They don’t like to think for themselves. They buy into all of the paranoid fantasies about Mother Russia being under siege. They see their invasion of Poland in 1941 as Poland’s fault. They see the Katyn Massacre as Poland’s fault. They see the times when they starved the Ukrainians in 1933 as Ukraine’s fault. Pretty much an ignorant and backward worldview.
How can you know what one thinks about?