Keep Putin in power.
1. Putin has balls - he built up the Russian army and up until sanctions and falling oil prices the Russian economy was doing well. People are still earning far more now in Russia than during the early 2000s - double, nearly triple. A Russian made around 10k Rubles a year in 2006, now a Russian in 2016 makes around 32k Rubles a year. Our politicians in the West DO NOT have balls - except for maybe Clinton maybe because she's just brazen and doesn't care about anyone, will say and do anything she wants even if it means dead bodies and failed states along the way.
2. Russian economy is smaller than China and India but their military is very powerful. India, China, Iran, and dozens of others countries buy Russian weaponry. The economy in Russia is not very good though, it's worth more than Canada but worth less than India's - even much smaller less populated countries like Italy, France, and Germany have a larger economy in terms of dollar GDP value. It is nonetheless one of the G-20 nations and it's economy is worth more than other regional powers like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Nigeria, etc. I would say that the combination of having the most land, one of the top providers of military hardware, a G-20 economy, having more nukes than the US does make Russia at the near superpower level. The main thing that Russia is missing from being a true superpower is bases in other countries - which Russia is in the process of establishing.
3. The Western leaders are a bunch of spineless cowards - especially Obama. He is totally indecisive and when he does make a decision it's often one that's the opposite of what his advisors suggested. His 'red line' meant NOTHING when Assad supposedly used chemical weapons - although apparently now there's been a report released by a British firm that they were paid by the FSA who got money from the west to release chemical weapons so as to make the public think it was Assad.. but that's another case... It's a wide known fact amongst government officials that Obama has a 'my way or the highway' attitude. Look at Merkel even - she is a total weakling and she allowed her country to be invaded by foreigners without even trying to put up a fight. The West criticizes nations that build fences or walls and protect their border. They're called cruel, bigoted, islamaphobes, etc. The leaders that do have balls like from Hungary, Slovakia (I believe that's the country that said we don't have any mosques here and don't want to start, and other Eastern European leaders as well as people like Trump, Nigel Farange, or Gaddafi even, any 'strongman' is thought of as racist, authoritarian, Hitler-like, xenophobic when they're just trying to protect their country and its borders. It appears as if anyone that is against UN, EU, NATO, Central Bank, IMF hegenomy is automatically criticized.
Feed the Russian delusions that they are a 'superpower'.
Americans are just as brainwashed and have the same delusion that our economy is doing well and unemployment is low. Just wait till this stock bubble bursts and then lastly the dollar bubble. Every boom and bust is made by design - one section of the economy kept artificially high and prosperous till eventually it goes bust and a new one then rises, then goes bust all just made to shift focus away from the true value of the dollar. In just the past few decades we went from the dot com bubble to the real estate bubble to the commodity bubble to the current stock bubble. The majority of US stocks are way overvalued. People saying Facebook is worth $100 billion?! How?! They don't have anything besides some advertising revenue. There is NOTHING PHYSICAL propping up the dollar aside from the idea that it is the most widely accepted universal currency. There is no gold propping up the dollar like before. Already we're seeing countries creating basket currencies so they don't have to trade with dollars anymore. Russia and China are the leaders in this. Arguably the main reason why Gaddafi was killed is because he wanted to create a currency called the Dinar which would be used by Arab and Africa oil producing countries to sell their oil. This means that the US and Europe would have to first convert their currencies to the dinar in order to buy oil from Arab and African countries. Well, that was no good - oil is too important of a product and Gaddafi had to go.