It’s no surprise that Obama finds this approach as silly as it is ineffective, but Goldberg’s exploration of the Red Line Moment made me curious about how the Russians see this common and unexamined refrain: Obama showed weakness on Syria so Putin exploited it in Ukraine.

“Wow, it’s kind of a revelation what you just said,” said a very surprised source from the Russian Foreign Ministry, who was not authorized to speak on the record, on hearing the question. “It’s not tied to any kind of reality. These things are not connected to each other in any way.”

“It is absolutely made up,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, the equally surprised editor of Russia in Global Affairs, who has a reputation for channeling the Kremlin view. “You shouldn’t think of Putin as such a primitive guy. It’s totally clear that the Syrian and Ukrainian crises had nothing to do with one another.” For Lukyanov, it’s almost insulting to suggest a connection. “Technically, it was possible then for Obama to hit Syria and destroy Damascus,” Lukyanov said. “Then Syria would have been yet another government that would’ve paid for doing something wrong. But Russia is a nuclear superpower, and this kind of rationale vis-a-vis Russia is senseless.”

That is, Russia sees itself as a power on par with America, and simply doesn’t group itself with a minor regional power like Syria. Even if Bashar al-Assad had been punished militarily for using chemical weapons, Putin wouldn’t have drawn the conclusion that he could be similarly punished for actions in Ukraine. Syria is Syria, and Russia is Russia, and you don’t punish nuclear superpowers. “In Moscow, they understood clearly what Obama now says openly,” said Lukyanov of what Obama told Goldberg—that Ukraine is not a NATO country and is always going to be subject to Russian meddling, regardless of what Washington does. “There are no obligations in the West and the United States to defend Ukraine,” he said. “Risking war with a nuclear superpower over Ukraine was just not going to happen. It would’ve been clear even if Obama had hit Syria. It wouldn’t have changed anything.”

The source from the Foreign Ministry echoed that sentiment. The action Obama did take—avoiding a strike on Syria and instead forging a deal with Russia to get rid of Assad’s chemical weapons—represented not weakness but an unusual moment of reason, in Moscow’s view. “It showed everyone in the world that, if there is a will in these two countries, any problem can be solved,” the Foreign Ministry source said. “It was very constructive work. ... Everything was done to help the administration get out of the corner they’d backed themselves into and to get them back into the zone of international law.”

“No one sees Obama as a weak president, and no one saw that moment as a moment of weakness,” said Igor Korotchenko, the editor of Russia’s National Defense Magazine and a reserve colonel of the Russian General Staff. He is also a member of the Defense Ministry’s civilian oversight council, and often acts as the ministry’s flame-throwing, anti-Western id. Yet he was strangely insistent on defending Obama’s honor. The American president’s decision not to enforce the red line, he said,“was a moment of rare strength.” Lest you think Korotchenko was buttering me up, he spent a few minutes lecturing me on how Assad never used chemical weapons. “It was a provocation by the rebels and this is well documented,” he told me. “Make sure you note that in your piece.” (The United Nations investigation of the August 2013 chemical-weapons attack outside Damascus strongly suggests otherwise.)