Totally agree. This line has been used too many times.
Putin has good reason to mistrust the West given the corrupt lot that are currently American and European heads of state, as well as all the alphabet soup of pseudo-governmental agencies that are attempting to exert their powers.
As far as Putin’s supposed longing for the good old communist days, he has a funny way of showing it. Right now he is on a gigantic building project all over Russia restoring or replacing every church and monastery the Soviets destroyed. Marxism and Christianity have never co-existed.
I’m not saying he is a lamb. He is one of those older autocrats who means to keep his nation secure, which is probably even more dangerous to the corrupt West than the USSR ever was.
It pains me to say it, but I finally now oppose use of the US military in any way, outside of in direct self defense, until the American people have rooted out the corruption that has overtake the military’s civilian custodians in government.
If that never happens, so be it. I do not want to live to see my country used as an enabler of evil.