Does President Putin Have A Moral Responsibility To Help Keep Cyberspace Safe For Humankind?

Russia is a great and civilised nation with a proud history.

The question is: What is its current leadership doing allowing extremists in their country to set a dangerous precedent in cyberwarfare - which targets political parties and politicians in foreign nations in bids to influence elections there?

The U.S. election last November was targetted to enable then candidate Trump gain an advantage over his opponent Hillary Clinton. It worked and today Trump is the U.S. president.

Now a similar thing is happening in the French presidential election - with hacked emails from Emmanuel Macron's campaign team being dumped online to give Marine Le Pen, the far-right nationalist candidate, the edge over her centrist opponent in the run-off of France's presidential election.

That cannot be right and it has to end. President Putin owes that to the human race. He must act now to end such irresponsible use of technology and cyberspace.

A powerful and important global power such as Russia must not be seen to be behaving like a rogue state on the global stage.

Russia is a civilised nation not a banana republic with nuclear weapons and one of the world's most  powerful armed forces.

Where will such online hacking-forays end? Are Russian hackers going to target critical infrastructure in foreign nations around the globe next, for example?

Will that not result in unimaginable chaos and disruption of life as we know it today in such targeted nations?

Russia is an important power that must be a force for good in our shared-biosphere. It must not be the source of such lawlessness. Ever.

Its current leaders must not allow extremists in  Russian society free rein to wage war on other nations in unprovoked cyber attacks.

That can never be justified in peacetime under any circumstances.

It is an unacceptable way to proceed in a world in which much of modern life now depends on internet connectivity and cyberspace cloud storage centres dotted around the globe.

All of humankind must work together to keep cyberspace safe for the common good of the peoples of the entire world's comity of nations - and we must not allow extremist individuals and groups to use it to cause harm to others.

Will there not be total chaos when extremist individuals and hacktivist groups  can damage critical infrastructure of nations across the world in coordinated cyber attacks?

Is that not more or less the cyber equivalent of using banned chemical weapons?

The question then is: Should such unacceptable conduct in cyberspace  not to be outlawed by negotiated international conventions for that purpose?

President Putin must never forget that he is an important world leader who governs a great nation - and that  he and the other leaders of the powerful nation that they  lead  have a moral responsibility to help humankind keep cyberspace safe for the benefit of the one human race. Enough is enough. We rest our case.