I still can't believe, in retrospect, how many american conservatives have gone from pretending to support freedom & democracy to supporting russia as

It doesn't surprise me. Putin is a nationalist, Zelensky is a globalist progressive. To them, Putin is fighting the progressive Jewish "new world order". They admire him as a strongman, like Trump. They (those conservatives who support Putin) don't support democracy. They support nationalist, theocratic autocracy. There's no way they would oppose someone like Trump becoming a dictator. They wanted an election overthrown, after all.