>There were no oligarchs in St. Petersburg when Putin got into politics

How do you call people like Gennady Timchenko? There's a nuanced difference between "Successful fossil fuel mogul" and "Member of a crime syndicate".

>Pinning this on Americans is a huge stretch

I didn't. It was a minor detail explaining that these were the second president elections ever happened in modern Russia and there was no local expertise in manipulating public opinion yet. And there was no legal checks and balances preventing abuse of power of the current president. "Administrative resource" had become a common noun after 1996.