Following the release of 20,000 Democratic National Committee emails by Wikileaks, there's been much ado about the source of the hack. Behind the release is a mysterious figure known only as Guccifer 2.0. It's been said he is Romanian, but U.S. intelligence officials claim that the technology used to compromise DNC systems included Russian language hacking tools.

The DNC, Clinton campaign and even President Obama are implying that Vladimir Putin is behind the hack and subsequent release of documents. The Kremlin has dismissed the allegations as absurd.

Russia has maintained that their long-standing policy is not to meddle in the elections of other countries. Of course, there are exceptions, and as the following report from Time Magazine suggests, Vladimir Putin has every reason to take down Hillary.

It's payback time and Putin may well be taking this opportunity to make good on a personal vendetta.

In December 2011, Vladimir Putin came closer than he's ever been to losing his hold on power. His decision that year to run for a third term as Russia's President had inspired a massive protest movement against him. Demonstrations calling for him to resign were attracting hundreds of thousands of people across the country. Some of his closest allies had defected to the opposition, causing a split in the Kremlin elites, and Russian state media had begun to warn of a revolution in the making.

At a crisis meeting with his advisers on Dec. 8 of that year, the Russian leader chose to lay the blame on one meddling foreign diplomat: U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.