I won’t comment on embarrassed, humiliated and on the verge of Balkanization (Chechnya? I’m not even sure what do you mean by that) stuff. Those definitely won’t be in my top-3 problems of the 90’s (and there were loads of them).
The rest of your post is more sensible, but I’ll try to comment on it when I have time. Absolutely agree on Russia/China though.
I was talking from an outside perspective. When you see those clips of Bill Clinton laughing his bottoms off with a completely drunk Yeltsin as Russia was being looted, for a so-called "superpower" before that, it was quite embarrassing. Of course, day-to-day Russian citizens who actually lived through those had a lot more things to worry about than being humiliated on the international stage.
About your graph, yes it shows a steady rise and then a sharp fall as the recession that took place after sanctions and falling oil prices. It's been steadily improving since from the sources I've seen, but of course, there are economic difficulties. Interestingly, according to UNWTO 2018 tourism statistics, Russian citizens' spending while travelling abroad had the highest % of the increase (11%) in the world only matched by those of French and Aussie citizens. Usually, those things are sign of improving economic conditions, but I am happy to be corrected. I agree with antihenry though that I can't see Putin staying after 2024 and most likely he'll want to go out on a high and if I were him I'd focus hard on domestic improvements for the final few years, but I think the successor has to be a relatively young person in their 50s, so that'd rule someone like Shoygu out.
As a person who wants to see just beyond economy and GDP, stats like
alcohol consumption being down by 40% since 2003 and tobacco consumption down 30% since 2009 in Russia is interesting and in my opinion and some credit should go to him. Also it's amazing that it took one successful World Cup campaign for him to be convinced to open up the country a bit and trust his beauracrats with e-visas with country expected to go all e-visa by 2021 (Spb, Kaliningrad and Far East are already) which has the potential to really shake up the economy by opening a whole new revenue stream. Again, I personally don't see it as black and white. He's done some things terribly wrong, but also has done somethings very well.
Anyways, there is a high chance I'll be living in St. Petersburg for a month or more before end of the year to acquire fluency in Russian, so it'll be interesting to talk to even more Russians from all walks of life and dig their brains to think what they think of his legacy and rule. 3rd time lucky in Russia!