Even before Rheinland, sorry, Crimea was annexed with the support of 107% of the Reichstag, sorry, Duma, I was rather flabbergasted at the turn towards crazily chauvinistic nationalism that the Putin cleptocracy, sorry, administration had taken - see the link:
Stalin's willing executioners
But after this latest shameless aggression it has become much harder to think that up to now the rather accurate "cleptocracy" lable is all there is to the story: what else is this militarism and revanchism and increasingly brutal oppression of dissidents, but the actual thing - fascism? It really seems that the 1930's have come again, and no, not as a farce.
