""Putin publicly blamed me for the outpouring of outrage by his own people," ... It is extremely risky to destabilize a regime that has thousands of nukes. If the ensuing unrest in Russia had gotten out of hand, Putin and his cronies could have decided to take America down with them, and started tossing some. Russia has far fewer checks and balances in their government/military. I remember JFK speaking publicly on television, in great detail, of how our safeguards worked for our nuclear weapons ... so that Russia could have a clue as how to modernize theirs.