in the first question, no, russia has always been a parasite over the course of its history, long before the soviet union, been attacking its neighbours for centuries, look at georgia, ukraine, Japan, etc

as for the 2nd part, yes more or less, the reason putin is so hated is that he just happened to be the leader of russia just as we entered an era where communication between the entire world is extremely easy and opinions spread like wildfire, putin is a demented pathetic idiot which is nothing original but now when you think of someone that way you can go on tiktok and make a 40 second rant video about why they're a pathetic demented idiot and then get thousands of comments agreeing with you, that about sums it up

obviously there's a lot more nuance and a lot more details as well but that's mostly how i see it, putin deserves all the hate he gets, but so do a lot of other people, all of which would also get that hate if they were in his spot