Sure, but it seems to me that if the point is assigning blame for Putin’s destructive actions, at least some of that blame should go to Putin himself.
It’s not like he or any other of the world’s “worst actors” are some kind of inanimate force of nature with no responsibility for all the “worst actions” they commit.
(And it’s not like Sam does a better job of predicting the moves of the “worst actors” than the policymakers that he tends to hold responsible for them. Remember when he thought that a Trump presidency was going to be a deterrent to Russian aggression so obviously Putin didn’t want Trump elected?)