What explains the Putin hysteria on the center-left? It seems that demonizing Putin allows Atlanticists and Eurofederalists to blame populist discontent in their own nations, not on the policy failures of their ruling establishments, but on subversion by an evil outside power.
The European Union is Eden and Putin is the serpent plotting to bring about the Fall. The fact that Putin, sincerely or not, expresses sympathy for European social conservatives and national populists allows the Europhiles to treat the latter as Russian pawns, just as the anticommunist right in the Cold War treated leaders of the civil rights and labor movements as pawns of the Kremlin.