No. Russians do not want real democracy so unless Russia is governed by the Western occupying forces for years, that would impose a real democratic system, Russia is very unlikely to be a democracy ever.
Why don’t Russians want democracy?
Russians are an atomized society that lacks basic knowledge of politics and economics. This is a closed society riddled with xenophobia and drawing information from the media that feeds this society with pure propaganda and lies as ordered by the Kremlin regime.
Even though it is a society with access to the internet - some of the Western websites are closed but still accessible in practice - but the state of the common knowledge shaped by years of indoctrination tells many that what is on the internet is Western propaganda and the West - as the authorities say is out to destroy Russia.
This society never had any experience of real democracy based on civic participation.
The 1990s was a transitional period characterized by anarchy, the collapse of state institutions, and the rise of oligarchy, which by no means is a democracy.
Afterwards, there has been Putin’s rule confirmed in rigged elections - with four years only when he was the PM while the president seat was occupied by Dmitri Medvedev - to avoid a problem with constitutional limitations of two consecutive presidential terms - which later were canceled for Putin by Duma (the Constitution was amended in 2020 to reset the number of terms Putin has served, allowing him to circumvent term limits in the 2024 and 2030 elections, enabling him to legally stay in office until 2036).
What this society knows is the historical experience of oppression and submission by various types of dictators dating back to the times of Ivan IV and every true reformer ended dead - Alexander II was killed by an assassin, Yegor Gaidar, former PM of Russia has been thrown to the margins, Boris Nemtsov, a critic of Putin’s regime (who uncovered the corruption of Kremlin’s clique later picked up by Navalny) was killed by a gang on the orders of the tsar, Navalny was murdered in prison.
What this society is accustomed to is a long tradition of plundering resources by clans and criminal management of the economy.
How such a society could introduce a democratic system and institutions? Even a patronal democracy like Romania or Bulgaria…
According to the Levada Center, the only independent research center in Russia, approximately 80% of Russians support Putin. These isolated cases of protests against the regime find the support of maybe 2 maybe 5 percent of Russians. This will never change Russia.
The term patronal politics captures systems in which people primarily work through networks of actual personal acquaintance to achieve their political and economic ends, including through the meting out of individualized rewards and punishments.
Cartoon by Tjeerd Royaards from The Netherlands