Last week, Putin gave one of his regular live press conferences where citizens could call in or email their most pressing concerns and have the president answer their questions live.
A woman wrote in from the region where Russian troops are amassed before being sent across the border to kill Ukrainians. She told Putin that her best friend wanted a puppy but the friend’s husband wouldn’t let her buy one. So the woman was asking Putin to tell the husband to get a puppy for his wife. So Putin did and now the woman finally has her puppy. It’s great that the country at war and in the midst of an economic crisis has managed to solve this very pressing issue.
The tradition of asking the tsar, the Secretary General, or the President to address such trivial issues is one of the most venerable in Russia. People maintain the belief that the only reason things don’t work is that the good tsar is not aware of problems. They are convinced that all they need to do is inform him of what’s happening and everything will magically improve.
Ukrainians, on the other hand, have a very different approach to their elected leaders. The good tsar mentality is one they have abandoned utterly and completely.
Clarissa's Blog 
There used to be a remnant of that in Poland. In the workplace if you needed something you didn’t mess around with middlemen or the chain of command (hah!), you hunted down the highest ranking person possible and then pestered them until you got what you wanted.
It’s changing, but very slowly.
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