The whole article is based on the premise that the world would be fine and governed by a just concert of western nations, if only this Putin guy wouldn't interfere with senseless acts of mischief and crime. Obviously he must must be mad or making nefarious plans for his personal gain, how else could he not accept our benevolent help for Ukraine or Syria? If one starts with this attitude it's no wonder foreign policy is being discussed like a soap opera review. A few facts, just to show how insubstantial the authors arguments are:

- that the two pieces of malware found on DNC computers can be attributed to Russian state actors says nothing about the source of the leaks. It would be rather weird for sophisticated state actors to compromise two ongoing operations by exposing data to wikileaks. Even if one of these actors was responsible- which is far from clear or even plausible- it might just be an act of personal revenge against Clinton for betraying the security council with regard to Syria.

- what's supposed to be abnormal about Russian actions in Ukraine and Syria? Syria is an ally, in which the government fights against a coalition of several western-allied states (turkey, as, Qatar and the US), even if it started out as a civil war. Is Putin supposed to simply drop Assad, and the Navy base, because western commentators would like him to? And that's not even talking about the terrorism aspect.

- the whole western press seems to have accepted the narrative, that the Ukraine had a Russian backed dictator that was driven off by his own oppressed people, that were denied western freedom. Anybody who had looked at the political situation there before the Maidan incidents would know that

- Yanukovitch was simply one more corrupt oligarch in a long series, just like the current president

- that his voters live in the eastern part of Ukraine, the industrial part with strong economical ties to Russia

- that the Maidan demonstrators were the simply the voters from the western part, who supported the opposition and were in no small part goaded by unrealistic promises of work in and travel to the EU

- that western support for violent demonstrators, that were probably responsible for the shooting of several policeman and citizens, that overthrow the government and force the election of one of theirs by threatening parlamentarians, would in many parts of the world be seen as an extremely hostile act.

- that forcing independence of the Crimean under these circumstances was an absolute non-brainer, since people living there would be idiots if they chose to live in a country where the opposition had just take power through a coup, a country in a state of civil war, while the alternative would be joining a country with twice the standard of living and the same culture? Even Gorbachev said he would have taken the Crimean, and I would have done the same given the importance of the black Sea Navy base.

I better stop here before this gets to far, but: Asking, please don't treat us as idiots who believe in your black and white fairytale. You have collected a lot of quotes from political enemies of the current Russian government (Julia 'kill them all' Timoshenko, seriously?) and a few that are seemingly out of context. It's good PR (or 'propaganda') if you address mainstream publications, but it's not what I come to this website for.