Reagan wouldn’t have had to make excuses for V. Putin because Reagan wouldn’t have let the relationship with Russia deteriorate to the point where the United States was backing the violent overthrow of a democratically elected European leader.
You’re talking about Victor Yanukovych as a ‘democratically elected’ leader who was ‘overthrown violently’?
Ever since 2004 I think it was -when the Russians started poisoning Ukr politicians who wouldn’t be lapdogs of the Kremlin- the Ukrainian elections are rigged for Moscow’s candidate- that’s no free and fair election, not until recently
And he wasn’t ‘overthrown violently’- nobody touched him, he ran away like a little b*&ch, and his (Russian?) snipers are the ones who introduced violence to the Maidan