I wouldn’t say that, and it certainly wasn’t obvious at the time that the Soviet Union was verging on economic collapse; even the most pessimistic of economic intelligence analysts didn’t think the Soviet Union would fail before the turn of the 21st Century. In retrospect and with post-collapse insights into the late Soviet Era economy, it is kind of shocking that they managed to keep the USSR running (and it was heavily dependent upon East Bloc imports for manufactured goods and numerous technologies). But while Gorbachev was front and center of what became the fall of the Soviet Union, he was far from unique; there was a cadre of younger CPSU up-and-commers who realized that the planned economy system was a failure; that the endemic corruption, formalized by an unwillingness to accept reports that didn’t meet production quotes, was untenable; and that the failure of the Soviet Union to expand its population and grow its international influence numbered its days as a superpower in all ways save for its nuclear supremacy.
But regardless of who was in charge, the explosion and broad radiation release of Chernobyl Reactor #4 with the ineffectual attempt at a cover up, the tragic and unnecessary losses from the invasion of Afghanistan, and the increased agitation by the younger generations in Warsaw Pact nations chafing against their own aging autocratic leadership and their forced patronage to the USSR meant that something was going to happen. I will say that with Gorbachev in charge, the odds of getting into a conflict that escalated into global nuclear exchange were substantially reduced. Things could have gone far, far worse, especially if there were a political schism within the ideological ranks of the CPSU in which a demagogue gained plenary control over the Soviet nuclear arsenal and decided to use it to preserve the Warsaw Pact and warn away Western nations from interfering in Soviet relations with Cuba or the handful of other supporting nations outside of the Warsaw Pact.
I think what Putin really wants is to resurrect Imperial Russia with himself as the the Tsar of Muscovy, creating a new dynasty in which Russia would realize its destiny as the “World Island” and Moscow the “Third Rome”. He has said with apparent sincerity that a world without Russia is not a world worth living in, and despite genuine estimates that the Russian nuclear arsenal and delivery systems may be far less reliable than they once were, it is still sufficient that even a small fraction of weapons could spell global catastrophe.
Stranger