1. Republicans were anti-Soviet Union because the USSR was a Communist country, which (in theory) put the rights of labor over the rights of capitalists.
2. Putin, despite having been a Communist at an extraordinarily high level, presided over the opening up of Russian (post Soviet) capital markets to the West.
3. In practice, most of the leadership in place today in Russia are appointees of Putin, while Russian democracy today is almost as autocratic as it was fifty years ago. However, the key point to most Republicans is that it no longer espouses the idea that labor has more right than capital.
Most Democrats don't really get this. They see Russia as an expansive political power with interests that are largely counter to and often inimical to the interests of the United States, acting like the USSR that had the Republicans so much in a tizzy over the decades. Republicans, on the other hand, see Putin as the kind of president that they wish that they had - autocratic, Machiavellian, ruthless, the epitome of what the perfect CEO looks like.
That's one of the big reasons why the issue just simply does not resonate with Republican voters. They don't care that Russia has nuclear weapons that are still live pointing at the US, don't care that they threw an election. The Russians were allies that put them into power. That's all that matters to them.
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