[muerdeme]

Putin (or his representatives) knows his audience. This piece eschews the normal alpha bravado that I would expect from Putin in favor of a coherent argument in favor of restraint. I found myself not merely nodding along, but inspired, and I hope that we can at least agree with him on this.

It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it. Millions around the world increasingly see America not as a model of democracy but as relying solely on brute force, cobbling coalitions together under the slogan “you’re either with us or against us.”

[deveac]

He certainly does know his audience, and he certainly failed to mention a certain key foreign power supplying weapons to one of the sides...

>This internal conflict, fueled by foreign weapons supplied to the opposition, is one of the bloodiest in the world.

Yes this is essentially a civil war between the current regime and a multifaceted opposition. Putin is heavily arming one of those sides.

[jtc331]

And the United States (covertly) is heavily arming the other.

[deveac]

Correct, as Putin pointed out in the piece (in the section I quoted above).

The point I was making was that this a political play by an invested actor, not the passionate reasoned plea it was trying to come across as. That was quite an omission he made there, though it made sense rhetorically for his purpose. The poster above found him/herself "not only nodding along but inspired" by they man who is responsible for the weapons that have killed tens of thousands in this conflict so far.

[foobarqux]

I assume you have the same criticism of Obama's address?

[DominikR]

Not covertly anymore:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-be...

[rdl]

Assad's media consultants also did an excellent job with his TV appearance (I assume they were Lebanese?). He basically was in the context of a US voter or politician making a seemingly sane and rational appeal.

[3327]

This is nothing more than a political slap in the face on the international stage to the US. It is almost on par with mingling with internal affairs of the US.

The irony of Putin is doubtless there, and the words logical and true, but the greater truth is that this is just nothing more than tit for tat on the international stage. Hopefully it will work out and bloodshed will be prevented...

[light3]

What are the chances Putin didn't write the article?

[Smirnoff]

I have seen Putin talk on TV a few times and I can totally see Putin say this "in Russian."

He probably had someone to write it down and translate the speech for him. So I have no doubt that Putin was the author of the speech/letter.

[JacobSkyler]

He probably directed the writing of the article but I doubt he actually sat down and wrote it with his own hand.

[ihsw]

There are some grammatical and capitalization errors, and numerous comma splices (stringing similar sentence fragments together in an effort to form a coherent statement). There was also usage of very short sentences in repeated succession.

Those are mostly stylistic issues but they're indicative of non-native grasp of the English language.

Furthermore it's clearly written by someone with enough capability to express themselves eloquently and succinctly, but as mentioned it's clearly non-native.

[sytelus]

That's very interesting. Any resources/research that you know about on how to identify non-native writing?

[idProQuo]

Not the same person, but I've found that learning other languages (and making mistakes in other languages) makes you attuned to what kinds of mistakes happen when speakers of that language learn English.

Just off the top of my head, Russian doesn't have articles. A Russian learning English is more likely to confuse definite and indefinite articles than a speaker of a Romance language.

I've been learning Thai and teaching English in Thailand. Thai has no articles, no tenses (in the way we think about them) and a simpler syntax with many prepositions and other "small words" omitted. When they start learning English, they often omit too many words and don't conjugate anything, so a sentence like "I don't have any pencils." becomes "No have pencil".

[sesm]

Of course, Putin's speechwriter is likely to be Russian.