Re: Hmm... Deja Vu...
Well, that may be so, but we would have more of a moral base to argue from if we hadn't destroyed any attempt of democracy and self-governance in the middle east, then, when that didn't work, doubled down and destroyed entire countries, killing hundreds of thousands, sending millions on the run, while seeding their earth with depleted uranium for their kids to grow malformed from.
Putin, and everyone like him, can always argue: "Hey, you lot did it first. I am just following your example on how to run an empire and fight terrorism". He would be right. I think he shouldn't be right.
Precedence and Example matter a great deal, when one is supposed to be the leader of the free world, indeed the leader of Anything. Good, Bad and Evil behaviour are all displays of Leadership and *all* will be followed. Everyone who is not a baby knows this in practice: If management is corrupt, everyone all the way down will soon have their fingers in the till too. Just how humanity works.
Vladimir Putin is such a small fry on the atrocity scale when compared to "Western liberal democracy".
We should worry about what we control: Our own behaviour, contrary to Vladimir Putin's, that we actually could totally do something constructive about, except we don't care to do that at all.
Because we rather prefer to rave and rant about the faults and failings of everyone else than owning up to our corruption and begin cleaning up just some of our own messes right here at home.