One other thing to consider is that Putin was a recent convert to the thinking of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who tried to warn the West of the consequences of their decadence. Putin made Solzhenitsyn’s writings required reading in Russian schools, something that would have been unimaginable during Soviet times.
Simply a tactic for gaining the trust of unsuspecting people in the West. To win them over to their side and support of their larger true agenda. Kind of like the communist-concocted "peace rallies". To this day, every one of the organizing groups are communist.
There is: United For Peace and Justice, which is actually a front for Communist Party USA. ANSWER, a front for Workers World Party. And the student-targeting World Can't Wait, an "anti-war" front for the very dangerous (Maoist) Revolutionary Communist Party.