America Should Side With Russian People Against Putin

Liberty: Russians have unexpectedly taken to the streets to obstruct Vladimir Putin's heavy-handed return to the presidency. Will the promise of the Soviet Union's demise be fulfilled two decades later?
Opponents of ex-KGB thug Vladimir Putin got a boost when Mikhail Gorbachev took their side. After Sunday's questionable parliamentary vote, giving Putin's United Russia party less than a majority, the last of the Soviet premiers told Interfax:


"More and more people are starting to believe that the election results are not fair." He also warned that "ignoring public opinion discredits the authorities and destabilizes the situation."
We have more than once debunked the myths surrounding Gorbachev. The late Boris Yeltsin, who famously stood on a Red Army tank in Moscow to defy a hard-line coup attempt in 1991, was the real post-Soviet hero; Gorbachev only wanted to soften communism.
But when even Gorbachev speaks out after years of being disgracefully reticent to criticize Putin, it shows just how dark the prospects for political freedom have become in his country.
Putin's party, at under 50%, got dramatically less than the 64% it garnered four years ago. But even that low showing is recognized as well above the true percentage of votes, thanks to various forms of government-orchestrated voter fraud.
In reaction, thousands of Russians have been demonstrating in Moscow and St. Petersburg this week, with hundreds arrested. These protesters are far more likely to achieve Western-style representative government than the Arab Spring demonstrators unleashed by President Obama's foreign policy.
Egypt, for instance, will likely be taken over by the "civilizational jihadists" of the Muslim Brotherhood, while Shariah law and al-Qaida are rising to the top in post-Gadhafi Libya.

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Unlike in Middle East Muslim nations, freedom is not culturally alien to Russians. Sadly, however, a resurgent Communist Party remains a strong opposition force to Putin. This is partially our fault because we blew our chance to cultivate a stabilized capitalism after the Soviet fall.
We can now rectify that mistake. We can stand with the Russian people who have dared to go public in opposing Putin — a nuclear-armed despot who threatens his own people as much as the rest of the world.