He most definitely doesn't perceive himself as a communist. His whole politics is anti-communist! He launched this war with a speech condemning Lenin ffs! My god, does nobody care what words mean anymore?
This is so ill-informed it makes my head hurt. Putin is a right-wing, capitalist, nationalist dictator, not a communist one. The west helped him into power partly because they feared a resurgence of communism in Russia after the disastrous Yeltsin years, and trusted him to do whatever it took to...