He didn't take over the USSR, he took over the Russian Federation, which is very different. He overthrew a "democracy" as the US called it as part of the FSB.
I would advise to watch some content with Putin speaking. A hell more intelligent and constructive than most US presidents. Russia is very power fragile country. It requires a very strict setup to hold stability. Lots of western countries (specially the US) are trying to break the stability by supporting lunatics which we in the west call the opposition. Those lunatics have one single mission and that is to destabilise or sabotage the Russian society. I will never say it's right to simply murder your opponents. But currently the country is very stable, safe and economically made enormous steps last 20 years. Leadership in Russia is very strong. It has still many issues to resolve. But please can the west stop enforcing their so called 'freedom' setup in non democratic countries.
Yes, many do not realize that Putin is quite intelligent or the complexities of the Russian state that could cause some unfortunate power struggles without Putin.
However, you're completely glossing over why Western countries have such problems with Putin. Do you have evidence of the West "enforcing" their ideals with the Russian state? Because here are a list of practically doubtless examples of the Russian state actually being the one enforcing their ideals onto other states:
Poisonings / assassination attempts outside their borders
This is true, but from what I hear this is mostly because he’s preferable than a power struggle between his oligarchs which is what people expect would happen in his absence.
And also in comparison to the utter diaster that was the brief period of democracy in Russia. The 90s were utterly horrible to live through.
Now, the reason the 90s were a disaster were not because Russia was a democracy, but nobody will take a foreigner making that argument seriously (and Putin can deal with locals making that argument).
The Russian mother of someone I know here in LA has pictures of Putin all over her house. I'm fully aware this is anecdotal, but by every metric, Putin is a popular guy within Russia. He's also probably unfairly demonized by the West, so our view of him is skewed.
Many Russians supporting him believe that he re-asserted Russia's influence in the world, and see Donbass and Georgia in a positive light. My grandfather is one of them. (Although he has soured on Putin himself, over the past few years. Reminds him too much of Stalin.)
I'd like to take a moment to point out that the people of any empire often see it's imperial ambitions in a positive light.
Dig just a bit, and you'll find Americans who thought Vietnam was a good idea, Frenchmen who thought Algiers was a good idea, Brits with Ireland and India, Argentinians with the Falklands, etc, etc, etc. They've all got a list of excuses as long as your arm for why they think so, and so do the Russians.
That's fair demonization. But we in the West have no issue looking past assassinations, electoral interference, coups d'états, and invasions far past what even Putin has done.
That being said, I still think Putin is an evil man. I just don't think he's really worse than, say, Bush, and I can understand while I massively disagree why so many Russians like him.
> we in the West have no issue looking past [...]"
Au contraire, Bush is widely panned across the West, trust in or respect to the CIA is at an all time low, and most educated westerners acknowledge those examples as having been terrible ideas.