IMO, Putin is pushing Russia back to the USSR. He's a longtime Soviet communist and, FWIW, I think he wants to re-create the USSR.
Bush may sort of like him but I think he is not to be trusted. Gorby was a better friend than Putin. Putin strikes me as "legacy-building*" dangerous.
* Legacy-building - as in the Clinton model.
Not the USSR.
Something more like what would have happenned if the Whites had won the Russian Civil War.
And present day China isn't terribly different from what would have happenned if Chiang Kai-Shek had won.