I think it’s not as simple as that.
Putin, Dugin, Zhirinovsky and Medvedev formed their opinions in the early 90s, in the bitterness they felt toward the collapse of the USSR, the “humiliation” of the Mighty Soviet Union being unable to keep itself together. They may have blamed the West for the aftermath of its collapse, but they also blamed Gorbachev and Yeltsin for enabling it.
And people should never forget that the oligarchs in Russia were allowed to continue robbing their country blind as long as they bent their knees to Putin, the guy elected on an anti-corruption ticket. He’s now a ruble trillionaire because the oligarchs that swore unconditional loyalty to him paid him a cut. Putin even had tame oligarchs in Ukraine. Medvechuk was one. Funny how the Putin puffers whingeing about corruption in Ukraine never seem to remember, half of the oligarchs and people on the take in Ukraine were in Putin’s pocket - including Yanukovych.
Even if Putin didn’t believe in Communism, he’s still a true believer in the mission of restoring a Great Russian Empire over eastern Europe and Eurasia. He knew all along he’d have to commit atrocities to build it, but that didn’t bother him in the slightest.
Putin really doesn’t care if he causes another Holodomor, or has to set up more concentration camps than Hitler. The Russian people - and their useful idiot mates around the world - will buy any excuse he comes up with. And to Putin these are trivial concerns compared to him restoring Empire to the Motherland. So strategically he had to come up with a narrative that discredited the role NATO had in keeping Russia on the east side of the Iron Curtain, and discredited its role after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact.
Putin’s neofascism in Russia today is just like German/Italian fascism in the WW2 Axis and Stalinism in the USSR. Same mentality, different flag. Hitler had his Jewish Conspiracy and the humiliation of Versailles, Putin has “NATO wants to destroy Russia” and the perceived humiliation of the Belovezha Accords.
Everything else is vranyo based on cognitive bias.
Ukraine has biolabs. Russia has biolabs. Russia’s biolabs keep leaking nasty stuff (anthrax for example) and gassing the towns they’re in because they’re so poorly maintained. Ukraine’s didn’t because Ukraine maintained higher standards. Ukraine’s were inspected by external and impartial observers, Russia’s ones certainly are not.
But because the inspectors weren’t bribed Russians giving Putin a slice of the pie, obviously it’s a conspiracy - a corrupt Ukraine creating bioweapons to use against Russia. All rubbish, of course.