Cherry on the cake has thousands of people now like him.
And? What does that do for him? Sports-washing accusations work for Saudi clubs who are clearly trying to raise the image of their country on the world stage so that they're in the conversation for larger tourism and global events etc.
It doesn't fit with Roman's ownership of Chelsea because he didn't do anything during his time to obviously try to boost his own image, or even that of Russia, and I'd argue that the public perception of both Russia and of Abramovic is lower now than it was in 2003.
Maybe he just wanted a foreign asset, but he made a huge financial loss owning Chelsea. Maybe he was genuinely just a fan.