They said one of the things that shocked them both when they moved to Western Europe was that people actually cared about elections. The thing is: Everyone knows that Russian elections are rigged, while the government pretends they're not. The Russian people see this and assume that everywhere else is the same. These Russians I met were young, intelligent people, but they had gone their whole life believing that everyone did elections the same way as them. When they heard of elections in other countries, they thought people were just as apathetic as them, because of course they're rigged, it's the most natural thing in the world. Thus: their legitimate shock when seeing people actually care about elections, and vote because they know/believe it matters.

This opened my eyes to an important reason the Russian government keeps up the "facade": It's essentially a brain washing/gaslighting tactic to make it seem like everyone else holding elections is also rigging it.