It's true that nobody would care about blackface in Russia, but not because Putin is ex-KGB lol.

Unlike US, UK and so on, there's no ancestral guilt or anything like that in Russia. When people make racist jokes about black people or say n-word it just feels innocent since there's no hate behind it. How could there be if virtually no one ever had any experience with them? All Russians know about black people is based on memes and stereotypes which came from the west through all kinds of media. And when I say no hate I really mean it, because it's really obvious when you compare those racist jokes and other talk to similar stuff Russians say about Chechens, Dagestani, Uzbeks and other Central Asian ethnic groups which are viewed very similarly to black people in the west. News about a black man who robbed a store? Saw it many times in comedy movies, will probably make a joke about it. Dagestani assaulted a girl in Moscow? Very real, right here, witnessed many times, nothing funny about it, blood boils, hate grows.

P.S. Fun fact, correct term for a black man in Russian language is "Негр/Negr", because they belong to a Negroid race. It's the same as to refer to an Asian as Asian in English. And at the same time "Чёрный/Black" has kinda offensive vibe to it and is often used towards ethnicities mentioned above even though their skin is not that dark.