How did Russian citizens view Former President Barack Obama?

Obama was viewed very poorly in Russia. This came from several factors.

National pride

When Obama came to town, Russia was pulsating with a fresh boost of self-confidence that came with the sudden windfall of petroleum bonanza. The country was awash with money, and a new amazing world of possibilities opened up. The US in the meantime kept viewing us as a marginal player, who had little significance for the matters they had at the top of their agenda.

The worst slight you can give to us Russians is to ignore us. Obama’s attitude to Russia during his entire presidency was one of benevolent indifference, mixed with occasional annoyance. We never forget that.

Racism

I was not aware of the degree of racism that our confrontation with the US during Obama’s presidency revealed in many educated, reasonable Russians. Whenever another American move riled our public, Obama’s big ears, the lilac hue in his lips, the athletic sturdiness of his wife were never late to arrive in the comments.

It all culminated when our national sports icon, a holder of multiple Olympic titles, now a profiled politician, published a photo of the Obamas mocking them with a banana on her Twitter. Apart from the tiny liberal minority, everyone else found the fact hilarious. It took a call from her daughter, who lives in America, to convince the lady to take her tweet down.

Putin

Obama had the kind of charisma and cool elegance that President Putin couldn’t dream about. Whenever they found themselves in the company of each other, our leader visually shrunk. He couldn’t help projecting the resulting feeling of discomfort on Obama’s personality and his politics.

Our loyalist media, acutely perceptive to President Putin's tastes, were quick to oblige. They systematically cut Obama down to size because his size—in terms of physical presence and global influence—was what riled our President the most. He was pictured as soft, indecisive and incompetent, all the features that we so much despise in our own bad rulers. The “overload” button that hapless Mme Clinton brought to Moscow in 2008 was a godsend as a symbol of this incompetence.

Clinton

The association with Madam Clinton during his second term was devastating for Obama in our eyes. President Putin and the entire mighty machine of our propaganda made her devil incarnate for her perceived role in the anti-Putinist wave of protests in 2011–2013, and the “color revolutions” around our perimeter.

The 2014 Crimea story brought it all to the head and marked the point of no return. But the singular biggest damage happened when Clinton jubilated at the news of Gaddafi’s disgraceful death from the hands of Western-backed insurgents. Putin watched the scene on the TV with terror: “This can happen to me, too.” For him, it became a symbol of American duplicity and brutality and seems to have marked our President for the rest of his life.

In the fan art below, Putin is beating the bejesus out of Obama. Creations like this one proliferated among patriotic Russians across the country and beyond. Amazingly, many patriotic Americans of Russian descent shared that feeling. In these pieces of art, President Putin is usually of the same size, or larger than Obama.

Answer by Dima Vorobiev, Former Soviet propaganda executive