Russian President Vladimir Putin has written an editorial for the New York Times, America’s unofficial newspaper of record, chastising the Obama Administration’s handling of the chemical weapons attack on civilians in Syria.

Putin of course is somewhat biased, what with Syria being Russia’s only Mideast ally.  The Russian Navy’s only base outside of the former Soviet Union is the Material-Technical Support base in Tartus.

The editorial puts the Russian leader front and center on the Syria issue, and therefore may actually put more pressure on the Kremlin to make that phone call to Damascus and ensure that Bashar al-Assad transfers his chemical weapons over to international control.

Here is the core of Putin’s argument, titled “A Plea for Caution from Russia”:

“The potential strike by the United States against Syria, despite strong opposition from many countries and major political and religious leaders, including the pope, will result in more innocent victims and escalation, potentially spreading the conflict far beyond Syria’s borders. A strike would increase violence and unleash a new wave of terrorism. It could undermine multilateral efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear problem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and further destabilize the Middle East and North Africa. It could throw the entire system of international law and order out of balance.

“We are not protecting the Syrian government, but international law,” Putin wrote, adding that any kind of military strike - even a tailored one as the Obama administration had described - would result in civilian casualties.

The piece will be no doubt analyzed and picked apart by pundits and analysts in the coming days.  It certainly seems to have been written for US President Barack Obama’s Democratic base, picking up on unease of the number of al Qaeda fighters among the Syrian Rebels.

“No one doubts that poison gas was used in Syria. But there is every reason to believe it was used not by the Syrian Army, but by opposition forces, to provoke intervention by their powerful foreign patrons, who would be siding with the fundamentalists.”

Putin ended the piece by refuting the idea of “American Exceptionalism”:

“There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”

Say, Vlad, does that include LGBT people in Russia?  Because lately, they’re a lot less equal than other Russians.