Does he really expect this to go well in the long term? Tyrants never learn from history, do they?
Stalin died in his bed of old age. Mao. Tons of western equivalents.
It's mostly good guys that get fucked over -- that's what history teaches us.
He had an OpEd in the new york times and people ate up his phony ass rhetoric with a goddamned spoon.
Remember when Mitt Romney said that Russia was perhaps the greatest geopolitical threat to the west and everyone laughed in his face, said the cold war was over, and called him an idiot? People seem to have a vested interest in deluding themselves that Putin isn't a bad guy, and that a bad guy in charge of one of the most geoplotically active nations in the world with an enormous nuclear arsenal is somehow not a big deal.
So, he pretty much did what most western powers do with umpunity since age immemorial? Minus threatening, controlling and/or invading non-neighborhouding countries?
Let's draw some stark fucking lines here.
Assassinating your avowed enemies in a time of war, that's one thing. Assassinating your home grown political opponents, that's another thing entirely.
Using the legal system to pursue whistleblowers who probably should be protected, again, that's one thing. Killing whistleblowers, that's another thing entirely.
If you can't recognize the difference then you are actively providing support for some of the most evil and repressive regimes in the world by making fuzzy what should be clear-cut moral boundaries.
And both have happened. Check out a 20th century history of the Western Europe and/or the US.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Check out the colonial and post-colonial histories of Latin American, the Middle East, Africa and Asia for reference.
Hitler was a small time crook (and Putin an insignificant insect) compared to what the other western powers did (and still do) in such places, from the Congo to Chile.