Speaking to Mir state TV on Thursday afternoon, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that U.S.-Russia relations are "deteriorating, getting worse by the hour. In recent years, the current U.S. administration has already taken several dozen decisions on sanctions with regard to Russia ..."

Putin is correct about that deterioration, but he only need look in the mirror to understand why it's happening. U.S. sanctions and broader U.S. policy toward Russia did not just spring forth from the ether without cause. They are direct responses to varied and repeated acts of Russian hostility against U.S. interests.

Let's consider some examples. There was Russia's 2016 U.S. election attacks and its 2018 interference with the midterm elections. There was the 2018 Russian super-high toxicity nerve agent attack on British soil. An attack which killed an innocent woman but failed to eliminate its intended target. There was the capture of Ukrainian sailors who simply sought to transit their own waters. Those sailors remain detained. There is Putin's continuing escalation against Ukraine's newly elected government and his continued retention of Crimea. There is Russia's deliberate targeting of Syrian hospitals in support of Bashar Assad's genocidal regime. This is what Putin is talking about when in his Mir interview he observed Russia's "significant contribution to the maintenance of universal peace and security." There are Russia's wide ranging efforts to undercut NATO, and blackmail Europe over energy supplies. There is Russia's support for Nicolas Maduro's starvation regime in Venezuela. And there is Russia's funding of Americans who support that regime.

Then there's is Putin's development of advanced nuclear strike capabilities, and his destruction of the INF arms control treaty. There are the increasingly frequent bombing simulations against U.S. territory by Russian strategic bomber aircraft. There are Russia's risky interceptions of U.S. aircraft operating in international airspace. And there is Russia's deepening work with China to degrade the American-led international order. A nation, incidentally, with which Vladimir Putin finds comfort in the shared destruction of human freedom.

If Putin wants better relations with the U.S. and a relaxation of U.S. sanctions, he only needs do the opposite of everything he has been doing.