He is also extremely corrupt.
By most accounts, he's the richest human being in the world. Now pray tell how did a politician come to amass such a personal fortune?
The answer is very simple - he stole it. The man, like any other dictator, has never even so much as sold a pencil from a tin cup in his life, and yet, he has amassed a personal fortune greater than Bill Gates and Steve Jobs combined. (They at least came up with a product and marketed it and made their money by earning it.) VP has just raped his own country and the Russians have let him away with it.
The reality is that Russia (and Ukraine) is corrupt to the very core. One time state owned companies were sold to insiders or connected people, or just plain shrewd individuals for a millionth of what they were worth. The so called Oligarchs. How does a guy like Roman Abramovitch (who used to sell trinkets in the street) come to be worth billions on top of billions? Putin is simply the most connected and he's rigged the game so that if you want to play, you need to cut Vlad in for a cut. (No different than your average Mafioso.
If the West really wanted to shut down Putin, they would simply find his money and deny him access, but he has so much money, and it's spread so far and wide, it would end up hurting the western bankers more than it would hurt Vlad.
Although I do believe that he is correct about Syria and ISIS, he's still a crook.