You are absolutely correct on every point. However Putin's success is not dependent on populism, so much as his success results in populism because what he succeeds at is keeping Russia from utter destruction by war profiteering banksters of the West. For example, in the war in 2008 in S. Ossetia instigated by the CIA in Georgia, it was obvious that Russia would quickly and successfully intervene to stop Georgia from shelling hospitals, schools, and playgrounds where ethnic Russians lived in S. Ossetia.
~3 kilometers south of the border of S. Ossetia is a junction of a pipeline from Baku, that is owned by the banksters that caused the war. It was an obvious and extremely profitable target that Putin could not have failed to note. Banksters were utterly certain he would seize that junction to punish them for their war crimes, and to profit Russia, then in the process of becoming one of the primary suppliers of oil in the world.
At the time, I was aware that $T's were being bet that the price of oil would rise. When Putin did not seize the pipeline junction and take that oil, the price of oil plummeted, and the world enjoyed for a decade fuel prices ~halved from what they had been, and perhaps 1/10 what they would have been had Russia taken the pipeline. It is this example of Putin's mastery of international politics that has made me grateful for his tyrannical rule of Russia. He's clearly a benevolent tyrant, and when availed an opportunity to personally increase his private wealth by $B's, he instead cost Russia's enemies $T's.
I am only in favor of Putin's policies that advance distribution of means of production to individuals consuming their products. However, I am unaware of any policies he has advanced for that purpose. This would suggest that I am completely opposed to Putin's policies.
In a wider context, Putin is acting as a nationalist, and given the existential threat to Russia, as the collapse of the Soviet Union could not have made more obvious, I find it certain that only his policies deriving personal power from institutions so that he could advance the interests of Russia in a corrupt world have enabled Russia to exist today.
Despite my admiration for his competence, I cannot fail to observe he is only human, and devoting his incomparable talents to Russian survival has necessarily prevented his advancing decentralization by focusing his attention elsewhere. His responsibility is to Russia, and the portion of humanity within Russian borders. The survival of Russia - and those people there - has only been possible due to his policies, because of global corruption of institutions vastly better armed and supplied than Russia.
In that sense - on the international inter-imperial competition - he has in fact exactly advanced decentralization. Russia has no national debt in a world drowning in national debt. Russia has successfully defended Syria from an international campaign deploying mercenary terrorists to destroy it, despite the asymmetrical imbalance in power between Russia and the West. These policies exemplify decentralization of security on the international level, despite that maintaining the power to effect them internationally requires internal police state policies that, of course, utterly offend me.
Regarding China's emulation of Putin, I cannot credit Xi with that admiration, but grant to Xi his own singular competence and vision, not mimicry of Putin at all. The vastly more advanced social controls of China indicate to me that such policies are the focus of Xi's social direction, not simply unavoidable relics of his need for focus on the international competition. It is the emulation of Xi's policies in the West that suggest to me Xi is not at all the enemy Putin is at the highest levels of the cabal.
This is why we see the enemedia constantly point at Russia as the enemy of all that is good and decent, while millions of Uighurs are used as organ factories for the transplant industry and the enemedia remark on this not at all. China is modeling what the owners of the 'free press' intend to do in the West, and Putin is not. I don't think Xi emulates Putin at all.
I think they could not be more opposed at that level, and suspect Putin may have all too human incapacity revealed in what appears to be attempts at political alliance between Russia and China. I remain certain that Putin is doing a far better job than I am able to even comprehend than could I, and can only leave it at that.
FIGHTING SPAM WITH MORE SPAM.