1) I think worries about gas supplies are somewhat less important now than before. We could probably start importing from the US. So that line of whinging and fear-mongering may not be a good enough excuse.
2) If Russian money is invested in the west then good - lets see how many Russians want to bring it back to the 'safety' of Russia. In any case they are not our major investors so that line of excuses is pretty thin too.
3) They forget that the very fact that they compare personalities is an indication of an unhealthy situation. " They find fault with men who are actually constrained by the will of other people and cannot ponce around to the same degree as the fellows who have whipped their own people into submission.
4) It's really easy for people to argue about what is morally right by comparing what happens in place X with what happens in the west because all you need to do is call someone a president and his gang a parliament and suddenly he is democratic. e.g. Mugabe in power for 33 years entirely democratically if you want to believe it. In general people who argue "if they did this, then he can do that" usually make 2 mistakes:
a) They criticise the west for doing X. When Their favourite dictator does something bad they don't criticise him but say that it's ok because someone in the West "did the same thing." In other words they see the sauce,goose,gander thing as a one-way street.
b) They forget exactly what their favourite dictator does not forget: after the moral argument about who is right in the end we must do what is best for ourselves moral or not. The best thing to do may not be chickening out and hiding it might be to demonstrate a lack of fear which encourages our allies, discourages our enemies and allows us to keep problems far away rather than allowing them to get ever closer.