Putin may not be a strategic genius, but he is strategically competent. He is also tactically unpredictable, even brilliant. Let's look at the record.
Putin as Foreign Policy Strategist
The first thing that needs to be stressed is that Putin has no grand strategy, no less one to 'reestablish the Tsarist or Soviet empire.' Such claims are delusions, paranoia, and/or well-compensated stratcomm. His goal is to ensure Russia's status as a global power, one of several great powers in Eurasia writ large, and the indispensable country for any other pursuing a presence in central Eurasia - the former USSR.
But there is no sure-fire strategy for achieving this goal other than that established before Putin's rise to the Russian presidency by then Russian Foreign Minister, the late Yevgenii Primakov. The 'Primakov doctrine' or strategy was the pursuit of a multipolar world through a 'multi-vector' or multi-directional foreign policy that took seriously the Russian state emblem of the double-headed eagle looking both east and west.
Comment: Mr Hahn has given a good overview of Putin's actions to date. However, it seems that he somewhat minimizes the tremendous problems and obstacles that faced Putin when he first came to power. Putin has demonstrated a clear grasp of facts on the ground, and a flexibility of approach as those facts change and morph that has proven effective for the last 15 years. Contrast that with the US necon's PNAC manifesto, which has lurched from disaster to disaster.