There isn't a reference in this text about how Obama was destabilizing Russia. I though there was an attempt to reset and improve relations. Was it when Ukraine got rid of Yanukovich? Why not accept that this was a popular uprising against a corrupt politician? I recommend watching videos of his palace when people got in there. Notice that, unlike Russia, or Belarus, Ukraine held elections and peacefully changed leadership multiple times since then.
A weakness of this critique is that it focuses on US only without looking at Russia. It's a state with bad anti-democratic tendencies [poisoning and jailing political opposition, killing journalists, suppressing individual freedoms, no independent judiciary...] that is trying to spread its system to more territory by force. I'm surprised that an article with the word Liberation in one of its topics doesn't acknowledge that spreading Russia's system to more territory is bad for liberty.
I agree with you. It’s hard to imagine that this is good for learning. If you look at the course preview video it’s not as bad, still very gimmicky and ‘engaging’ though. Maybe this has to do with age - people who grew up with social media might perceive this differently.