I don't even know if words like liberal and conservative even apply to Putin. He's a former-KGB intelligence officer running a sham democracy he had to essentially build himself. And considering his party has no meaningful opposition at all, he has a lot of room to do whatever the hell he pleases socially.
I'm willing to bet that this string of events has a lot more to do with creating a red herring than anything else (on his end, at least). Give people enough tangential stuff to get angry about so they can't coordinate into any kind of realistic opposition. And make sure they're divisive issues, so your opposition has an even harder time finding common ground.
That way, all your opponents stay politically separate from each other, and you don't have to risk facing a real election.