> What exactly does "the West" stand for, in your view?
Freedom of expression/speech, free press, representative democracy, independent court system, individual (women/minority) rights. There are other things like not being a religious theocracy, but I think the first few cover the most general important pieces.
> you make it sound like it was large scale cyberwar, which it wasn't
Evidence suggests it was large scale and directed by Putin through the Russian IRA [1], though it was likely more effective than even they expected (and more of a disinformation campaign than a cyber war).
"But it quickly became clear that the Russians had used a different model for their influence campaign: posting inflammatory messages and relying on free, viral spread. Even by the vertiginous standards of social media, the reach of their effort was impressive: 2,700 fake Facebook accounts, 80,000 posts, many of them elaborate images with catchy slogans, and an eventual audience of 126 million Americans on Facebook alone. That was not far short of the 137 million people who would vote in the 2016 presidential election."
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/09/20/us/politics/r...
> Russia would now start a global war in Europe that would very likely go nuclear because ... the West isn't "standing up to it"?
I'm not suggesting they'd start a global war, but they're targeting NATO allied countries by influencing elections towards instability. Maybe it's just to free up access to their funds by trying to get rid of the Magnitsky Act [2], but if they wanted to more aggressively take over Ukraine or do something else hostile increased global instability might lead to something larger.
Obviously these things are hard to predict, but only a couple years prior to WWI people said the connected world economy made large scale conflict impossible. [3]
"A 1910 best-selling book, The Great Illusion, used economic arguments to demonstrate that territorial conquest had become unprofitable, and therefore global capitalism had removed the risk of major wars. This view, broadly analogous to the modern factoid that there has never been a war between two countries with a MacDonald’s outlet, became so well established that, less than a year before the Great War broke out, the Economist reassured its readers with an editorial titled “War Becomes Impossible in Civilized World.”"
> This is nonsense, and really is a "Cold War mindset"
It's not that anything they do is bad, but if you read about the people in power there from those that have interacted with them like Bill Browder, Gary Kasparov, and others - (in addition to the Russian government's current behavior) it suggests that they're not a government interested in rule of law.
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act
[3] http://blogs.reuters.com/anatole-kaletsky/2014/06/27/world-w...