Putin served his country. He has stated that Communism was a failure and could never work.
Many have misunderstood his statement about the fall of the Soviet Union being a catastrophe....It wasn’t because he missed the Soviet Union, and wanted to return to it....it was more a statement on just how badly mishandled the transition was in the first few years after the fall, I think he has some legitimate points there.
Putin even doubled down and said that the Soviets should have done whatever they could to prevent the collapse, so Putin does not just miss the Soviet Union, he actually wishes it had not collapsed.
It is not the transition under Yeltsin that he laments, indeed the Russian people suffered far worse under the Soviets than under Yeltsin. What really bothers Putin is that the EVIL EMPIRE lost so much territory, from the Baltics to Ukraine, and that the Russian conquerors living in those newly independent states now found themselves no longer able to bully and oppress the local populations. Those who gained their freedom and independence from Soviet tyranny do not feel the same as Putin. They do not miss the Soviet Union at all, and they celebrate it's collapse, along with all civilized people around the world.