Putin is a nationalist dictator whose foreign policy seems to be driven by some combination of a persecution complex, an inferiority complex, and a Mafia-like n

Putin is a nationalist dictator whose foreign policy seems to be driven by some combination of a persecution complex, an inferiority complex, and a Mafia-like need for "respect", and perhaps to distract from the domestic situation. I do not think there are any signs that resurrecting the Czarate is one of his motives; it is merely that they have resulted in something that resembles it (or the Soviet Union without the nominal socialist theory, for that matter.) One might as well compare him to a Byzantine emperor or a shogun.