Hi, Elena. I commend you for following the hyperlinks, though I stand by the soundness of my sources, and urge you to reconsider your apparent decision to trust Putin’s propagandists over professional journalists and scholars at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Your juvenile, homophobic abuse probably violate’s Medium’s norms.

No one paid me to write this piece. I post only my own work and my own views here. “Pen for hire” indicates my willingness to write for others; when people & institutions pay me to write, they publish the work in their own pages/on their own site.