He’s been out of the news for a while and wants attention. Russia is still the same failed state it was a few years ago. I suspect he is upset that rocket man is getting all the hype.
He needs to distract Russians from all their domestic crises: tanked economy, poverty, an HIV epidemic, embattled Islamic republics of Chechnya and Daghestan, dead mercenaries in Syria, massive exposes into the lavish lifestylee of Putin’s oligarch friends, Olympic doping scandal, derelict Russian villages, to name a few...
Its not so much “distraction” as it is deflection.* Putin admits problems exist...just that they are not Russoa’s fault...but America’s...somehow everything cycles back to us.