How many people read such long articles these days? I may be wrong but in an average American's mind Russia stands somewhere between thermal death of the Universe and prognosis for crops in Zimbabwe this year. They've heard in some announce on TV in between a baseball translation that Putin is a monster. Period. No further explanations necessary. There is a Russian idiom 'метать бисер перед свиньями' (to cast pearl before pigs). That's what I think the author's doing in this article.