> Do you as well believe in the shadow government which controls every public figure?

This is a trademark of the people who call themselves "free thinkers", or as the rest of the world commonly knows them, "tankies". I'm solely talking about the russian society: the same society that is unironically congratulating women for getting a new free coat after having their children killed. The same society that's gloating about 4 year old girls having their legs blown off by their rockets. The same society that left their country by the millions in recent years, not because they are against what they country is doing(and had been doing for centuries btw), but because they personally don't want to be sent to the front lines. Navalny was no different and you can easily confirm all that for yourself if you spend 5 minutes googling. Was he managed by the kremlin - unlikely. He just wished to be the next dictator and get his own mansions filled with golden toilets. Had he managed to achieve it though, nothing would have changed but the face of the operation. Navalny had 0 redeeming qualities.

all the corruption investigations his team did is a redeeming quality. No one else in russia did such thorough investigations

He had nothing to do with the investigations, he just made a youtube video about them. Join any OSINT initiative and you'll see that he brought absolutely nothing to the table - all his vlog did was to show things that were known for decades. More importantly all that "investigation"/vlog did was to outrage the non-russians. There are plenty of interviews with average russians who openly say "well yeah, of course putin has big and expensive mansions - he deserves them". And you can clearly see they truly mean what they say.

Looks like you have quite a grim outlook on russians, saying that Navalny would have ended up being the same dictator, that russians want war and want Putin as their president.

But why? I lived in Russia and even I can't be that certain. It's hard to talk about war with random people to understand their attitude. Because they live in environment where at some point you could be punished for calling this war a war.

Sorry, I've had my fair share of experience with russians, none of those were positive and I'm being extremely generous. And sorry, "you could be punished for calling this war a war" this is called being a chronic coward, assuming they do not support the war. When the special forces were beating people up to death on the streets a few kilometers from my home in the 90's, my dad picked up a crowbar and went out to fight back and my grandmother, who was 50 kilos went out to do the same with a wooden stick. They were both willing to do everything they can, even give their lives if it came down to it. This says one of two things about the current russian society: either cowards or psychopaths supporting genocide. But most probably both.

And yes, look him up on google, swap the face and the voice and you won't be able to tell the difference between the dictator and the dictator wannabe - they say the exact same things.