After initially promising to respond to Barack Obama's recent actions against Russia for meddling in American politics, Vladimir Putin is now saying he won't respond in kind to the Obama administration's decision to expel Russian diplomats and shut down Russian facilities in America:
In a head-spinning turn of events on Friday, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia announced that he would not retaliate against the United States' decision to expel Russian diplomats and impose new sanctions — hours after his foreign minister recommended doing just that. Mr. Putin, betting on improved relations with the next American president, said he would not eject 35 diplomats or close any diplomatic facilities, rejecting a response to actions taken by the Obama administration on Thursday. … "While we reserve the right to take reciprocal measures, we're not going to downgrade ourselves to the level of irresponsible 'kitchen' diplomacy," Mr. Putin said, using a common Russian idiom for quarrelsome and unseemly acts. "In our future steps on the way toward the restoration of Russia-United States relations, we will proceed from the policy pursued by the administration of D. Trump."
Considering Obama stood by while Russia took over the situation in Syria and invaded Crimea, these last-minute punishments against Russia, while not undeserved, do seem to have a rather flimsy pretext. If you do believe that Putin meddled in the election to elect Donald Trump—and releasing John Podesta's embarrassing emails is hardly evidence that there was not a free and fair election—ejecting a few diplomats seems like a small price to pay for Putin getting his preferred president elected.