That's an excellent question, and thanks for reading me so carefully. You have it just right.
The point is somewhat surprising, that Putin does not intend to raise the economy; he intends to get his political legitimacy from other sources. All these authoritarian rulers do not really care about economic growth. They care about two things: their own wealth and that they maintain political control.
That's what makes Putin's foreign policy so dangerous: that he wants to extract legitimacy for his rule through small, victorious wars. The Crimean annexation brought forth the ideal policy from the Putin point of view. Did it cost economically? Yes, but not very much. He could afford it.
He's very anxious to repeat low unemployment. Unemployment in Russia, as we speak, is 5.2%, according to credible statistics. He's anxious to get inflation down. It has fallen from 16% to apparently 5.4% in the last two years. These are things that he cares about. He also wants to have big international reserves. They are at $385 billion, one-third of GDP, which is very impressive.
Putin hopes to keep his people quiet not through a higher standard of living, but through just tagging along. It's a very undemocratic attitude, and therefore for us it's rather difficult to understand that he actually tries to operate like that, but the point is that so far he's successful.