Perhaps the reason the left has this on-again, off-again love affair with Russia and currently hates Putin and any effort Trump makes to work with him (and the same might apply to Kim and even to China) is that Putin and today's Russian leadership just aren't Soviet enough. Venezuela would be a socialist utopia if Khrushchev was still in the Kremlin, and we wouldn't be seeing capitalism on the rise in former client states if Stalin held the reins.

It may be that the left sees Putin as "Russian In Name Only."