These are interesting points. In general, I think you are right about the MSM not presenting Putin's speeches clearly. He sounds rational at the very least, and he obviously mentions Russia's various legitimate grievances, something that the western MSM only ever mentions in passing at best. None of that supports their narrative that Putin is insane and decided to invade Ukraine out of a pure desire for conquest.Anyway, back to your interesting last paragraph, @bucky .
I think that Putin has made this "180", actually 80 degrees turn. Just listen to his speeches since the beginning of the operation. It's all about restoring the greatness of Russian (Federation) traditional culture and History. It's very moving and exceptionally anti-Globalists.
And you're I think mistaken if you think that western MSM would have jumped on it. MSM absolutely needs to silence and memory-hole Putin's recent speeches. MSM won't analyse them publicly, they prefer to "cancel" them online.
(In spite of this, I've actually been surprised at how many people I've met here in the the US who have at least a basic understanding that the Russians didn't just wake up one morning and decide to invade Ukraine for no reason.)
About Putin's new brand of nationalism, I guess I should listen to his recent speeches more closely. What you're describing sounds disturbingly close to the civic nationalism we have in the US, which is extremely stupid, obviously doesn't work well, yet is also somehow our most cherished value. Vox Day calls it "the melting pot lie" or "magic dirt theory." That is, the idea that anyone from anywhere can be an American and live happily and be prosperous under our traditional system while also benefiting the rest of society, whereas that's really only clearly true for people of mostly British descent and MAYBE other types of western and northern Europeans, although even they can struggle. For the large numbers of Africans, Asians, Latin Americans, Jews, etc. we have, this Anglo-Saxon system has to be constantly changed in haphazard, inconsistent, and illogical ways, which I believe is the core reason for most of the major problems we have nowadays in the US and other Anglo countries.
On the other hand, this new Russian civic nationalism you speak of will obviously be different from what we have in the US, so maybe it will work better. I still think you'd see a lot of resentment toward Westerners, even of the based and red-pilled variety, if they started arriving in large numbers in Russia, but who knows.
I'll give you that free beach front property in Odessa or Sevastopol sounds great, if they're really planning on giving those out to foreign volunteers after the war. I'm middle aged with a bad knee and I've got kids to take care of, not to mention that I also don't trust the Russian authorities as much as you do, so I'm not going. On the other hand, if you're young, single, and believe in Russia and that nice flat with an view of the Black Sea as much as you seem to, it does sound like a great offer.