Didn't Putin say, or at least infer, that he wanted to recreate the borders of the former Soviet Union?
No.
I saw an article from 2014 that cited John Bolton saying that Putin saw the collapse of the Soviet Union as a major geopolitical disaster of the 20th century for the Russian nation because tens of millions of Russian speaking "co-citizens" and "co-patriots" found themselves in the former Soviet Socialist republics outside of Russia. Bolton commented that Putin wanted to bring all of those "co-citizens" and "co-patriots" back under the umbrella of a new Russian empire. To bring those former Soviet citizens back, the land that they lived on had to come along too.
He was spouting that stuff back in 2005
[url=https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna7632057][/url]
“First and foremost it is worth acknowledging that the demise of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” Putin said. “As for the Russian people, it became a genuine tragedy. Tens of millions of our fellow citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory. The epidemic of collapse has spilled over to Russia itself.”
