It’s a bit of irony, really, that Stalin would name his state ideology “Marxist-Leninism”, esp. as he lost in the power struggle to Stalin.

Assuming you meant that Lenin lost to Stalin, he lost power by suffering several grave ailments—including three strokes—for several years and then dying. He became physically & mentally unequipped to lead.

Marxist-Leninism is a misnomer since it seems to betray both Leninism and Marxism

This is a common belief among Western leftists, including most Western Marxists[1][2].
As some of us say—tongue in cheek—ultras fear the scroll.

I have yet to understand why people are MLs today other than as a kind of pragmatic alignment against Western imperialist powers

That’s not the whole of it by any means, but imperialism vs anti-imperialism has been the primary contradiction of the last 150+ years of capitalism, and likely will continue to be in the coming decades.
V. I. Lenin, 1916: Imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism

I don’t understand the ML love of contemporary Russia

That’s because we don’t “love” contemporary Russia, nor do we think that it’s in any way socialist:
https://lemmy.ml/comment/16985906