Late last night cable news channels were abuzz with Vladimir Putin’s cleverly crafted “Open Letter to the American People.”  The letter is patronizing and offensive, seeking to seize upon divisions in this country by a petty dictator who has taken Russia’s  western-backed 1990s progression towards true democracy and trashed it. The divisions that Putin seeks to exploit are possible in a country with freedom of speech, the press and thought like the United States but impossible in an autocracy like Putin’s Russia.

I support a free press obviously but the decision of the New York Times to publish a letter full of bluster and lies from our nation’s greatest geopolitical enemy was ill advised. I understand why the Times would publish this letter but the editors should have stopped its publication realizing the paper’s scope and credibility were abused by a dictator who is an enemy of this country. Having a free press does not mean you give the enemies of this country and open forum to belittle this country and misrepresent global realities.

I would urge all Americans to reject Putin’s overtures as his goal is to weaken the United States, strengthen Russia, control the energy flow to Western Europe, bog America down in the Middle East, undermine President Obama, steal global leadership from our country and to befriend any dictator of the left or right that wants to attack the United States verbally. He is not to be trusted and never to be listened to. Putin is taking advantage of a free press here while he would jail or poison any opposition in Russia. Please remember that while reading his letter which if written by someone else would sound reasonable. But it is not…it is a way to try undermine our government and our values by someone committed to damaging the United States and imposing a differing set of values on the global community.

Russia under Putin has become a global pariah and scourge whose single value is anti-western. While the Soviet Union was an enemy of the United States at least they had an ideology associated with their anti-Americanism. Putin on the other hand has grown Russia into a nation that seeks to economically exploit the west (something the communist USSR could never hope to do), and whose lack of ideology or principle allows him to make convenient alliances with any nation that has voluntarily rejected international norms or the global community of nations by their own volition.

During the Cold War the Soviet Union was dangerous militarily and fostered leftist revolts around the globe. But today Russia is more of a dictatorship of the right, with monied oligarchs running rampant in exploiting the country and its economic resources while buying up large portions of western Europe. Putin has also crushed internal dissent, jailed and killed journalists and destroyed the rights of minorities and the LGBT community. The culture of ethnic purity and racism that hardly existed in Soviet days has a comfortable home in Putin’s Russia.

People who stumble upon today’s NY Times editorial should not be fooled. Putin’s motives are wholly selfish. Russian society has taken a definitive step backwards in the last 14 years that the nation has been dominated by Putin’s autocratic rule. His goals of undermining American prestige and soft power are being achieved in this Syria crisis. It is imperative that President Obama and the American people push back against this naked power grab by the Russian leader.