“Putin discusses how the Soviet Republics had no real power. ‘In practice, a strictly centralized, absolutely unitary state was created... under the conditions of a totalitarian regime, everything worked anyway, and outwardly it looked beautiful, attractive and even super-democratic.’”
Yes, from his speech what he believes is authoritarian control, and that is what he misses from Russia’s past.
Ironically that has everything to do with why Ukraine even had The Crimea in the first place. It was an empty gesture by Khrushchev, when he was trying to consolidate his power after Stalin's death.