The West's Moral Authority to Disparage Putin

None whatsoever, according to former UK diplomat Craig Murray.

I agree completely.  Craig states the basic case:

The plain truth is that the Western powers interfere far more in other countries than Russia does, through massive sponsorship of NGOs, journalists and politicians, much of which is open and some of which is covert.

I would have also explicitly mentioned the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, and the sanctions the US levies and enforces on many countries.  In the last 30 years alone, many millions of people have died as a result of US foreign wars, weapons, and sanctions.  (I've seen one believable estimate of 10 million.)  Nothing Russia or China have done in this epoch has come close, and this pattern holds all the way back to the end of WWII when US fought big wars in Korea, Vietnam and other countries, and funded 80 deadly coups also responsible for the deaths of millions.  US has been #1 in deaths from war, sanctions, and coups for some time now.

Craig also rejects a claim many of my friends nearly always make:

There is simply no evidence of Putin having territorial goals beyond Ukraine and the tiny enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. It is perfectly fair to characterise Putin’s territorial expansion over two decades as limited to the reincorporation of threatened Russian-speaking minority districts in ex-Soviet states.

That it is worth a world war and unlimited dead over who should be mayor of the ethnic Russian and Russian-speaking city of Lugansk is not entirely plain to me.

The notion that Putin is about to attack Poland or Finland is utter nonsense. The idea that the Russian army, which has struggled to subdue small and corrupt, if Western-backed, Ukraine, has the ability to attack Western Europe itself is plainly impractical.

Then, Craig points to the obvious inconsistency between how Russia is disparaged and Israel is defended:

Strangely, the same “logic” is not applied to Benjamin Netanyahu. It is not argued by neoliberals that his annexations of Gaza, the West Bank and Southern Lebanon mean he must have further territorial ambitions. In fact, they even fail to note Netanyahu’s aggressions at all, or portray them as “defensive” – the same argument advanced much more credibly by Putin in Ukraine, but which neoliberals there outright reject.

Many Zionists including members of current Israeli government have recently made aspirational visions of a Greater Israel which not only includes Gaza and other parts of Palestine, but Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, and beyond.  Craig doesn't venture that far in this post.

Then Craig states how the current European chest thumping looks in Russia:

The economies of Western Europe are being realigned onto a war footing, led by the utterly transformed European Union. The enthusiastic proponents of genocide in Gaza who head the EU now are channelling an atavistic hereditary hatred of Russia.

The foreign policy of the EU is propelled by Kaja Kallas and Ursula von der Leyen. The fanatical Russophobia these two are spreading, and their undisguised desire to escalate the war in Ukraine, cannot help but remind Russians that they come from nations which were fanatically Nazi.

To Russians this feels a lot like 1941. With Europe in the grip of full-on anti-Russian propaganda, the background to Trump’s attempt to broker a peace deal is troubled and Russia is understandably wary.

Then he states the basic case where we concur:

But Putin is not Hitler. It is only through the blinkers of patriotism that Putin appears to be a worse person than the Western leaders behind massive invasion and death all around the globe, who now seek to extend war with Russia.