That's exactly the feeling I got when Bush looked into Putin's eyes and "saw his soul" (or some such crap). The guy is an ex-KGB general - and like the Mafia, I don't think that there's really every an "ex-", especially at the level of a "made" member. He's smart as a whip, dresses nicely (unlike Arafag and other political gangsters), gives lip-service to democracy, etc. IOW, he's good at misleading people, all the while consolidating (at first) and growing (recently, now and planned for the future) his power - at our expense.
As my father's cousin, who left the Ukraine in 1994, told me when I asked about the political situation there since Gorby got kicked out: "Same wall, different wallpaper."
We have much to be worried about, beginning with the Russkies selling all manner of sophisticated weapons to the Arabs and Iran. An anti-US/anti-Western alliance with China is my nightmare scenario, and even if it isn't a formal thing, both of them hate our guts and want to bring us down a few notches. We need to wake up, fast, because the Cold War never ended - it only took a breather. This is very much like the thesis that WW1 and WW2 were 2 acts of the same play, with the 2nd act being far bloodier. Heaven help us, we're going to need it.
I agree totally with your assessment, including that of Bush vis-a-vis Putin. It seems that the Russkies also are making claim on the North Pole.