For any adults interested in understanding the current riff between the USA and Russia, at a level more substantial than "Vladimir Putin is evil", I recommend these two articles:
How Harvard Lost Russia
http://www.institutionalinvestor.com/Article/1020662/How-Harvard-lost-Russia.html#/.WHPDx3eZOgR
Andrew Bacevich: How the US Blew the Post-Cold-War Era
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/01/andrew-bacevich-us-blew-post-cold-war-era.html
The following is completely unknown to most Americans, but at the end of the cold war there was a sincere wish on the part of Gorbachev, Yeltsin, etc for Russia to be integrated as a normal western country. This was rebuffed by the USA, by the Clinton administration, something many Americans were warning about in the 1990s. The Clinton administration was mostly focused on plundering Russia, on turning into a bankrupt third world country, and on flipping the former Soviet satellites into NATO/EU states. The Putin era is blowback to the 1990s mess.
I glanced through your links. I'll look closer at them later when I have more time. Maybe it's a good idea for you to use shorter articles when you try to make your pro-Putin points. This isn't a classroom and you aren't our teacher. We don't need long assignments here.
And when I perused the provided articles it looked to me like those articles were an effort to justify/excuse Putin's bad behavior. And by submitting that material to us you become part of that effort to justify/excuse Putin's bad behavior.
And why make light of the point that "Vladimir Putin is evil"? Vladimir Putin IS evil. And that fact is a key point to those of us who believe in freedom, democracy, and justice since Vladimir Putin's "evil" comes in the form of enslaving people, authoritarian rule, and the death of democracy. In other words, Vladimir Putin's evil takes the shape of killing freedom, killing justice, and killing democracy. His "evil" crap would pervade every aspect of human life if his warped and evil vision became world order. Hence, the fact that he is "evil" is sufficient reason to stop him.
Today its' Ukraine, tomorrow maybe its YOUR homeland. What would you say if Putin comes for your homeland? Then you'll be crying for help the same as Ukraine is today.
WW2 demonstated that tyrants should be stopped early-on because the more territory they take the stronger they get. Hitler almost took over the world because the best efforts to stop didn't start until late in the war. And with each country he took the more powerful he became.
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