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You are mostly right although poor public services are mostly a result of a small government.
As for inability to beat the government at court is is a rather widespread belief but it isn’t actually supported by facts.
The problem is most people do not seek quality legal advise which is actually available but not cheap. There are lawyers specializing in it and due to overall low level of government employees your chances to beat a thing like unlawful fine or another administrative act is actually higher than elsewhere.

This company (in the import business) has a problem proving its case in court against the customs service. The other party's barristers look very bleak and ours always beat them up in the discussions but the decisions remain unfavourable.The point is under which point the imported goods should be classified.

I can't compare this to the U.S. situation, I'm not aware of it.

And not all the business problems in Russia are because of the government and/or Putin. The civil courts don't understand much in complicated equity-related cases. There are a lot of unenforced regulations, the regulations themselves are pretty dumb, lots of areas which require regulating while there are none, and so on.

In short, the legal environment is being established only.