Fred Weir, of The Christian Science Monitor, has long seemed to me the most dependable and best-informed North American correspondent in Moscow. His reporting stood out on the agglomeration site Johnson’s Russia List, even before David Johnson offered a collection of fifty of Weir’s dispatches, 1999-2016, as a subscription premium. Last week provided a striking example. The occasion was a Vladimir Putin press conference in Sochi, where the Italian prime minister was visiting. The New York Times headlined: Putin Butts In To Claim There Were No Secrets And Says He’ll Prove it By Andrew Higgins MOSCOW – Asserting himself abroad…