Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that his country’s battle was with “Western elites,” not with the West itself, in a speech seemingly aimed more at winning over political conservatives abroad than his own citizens, the New York Times reports.
Said Putin: “There are at least two Wests.”
“One, he said, is a West of ‘traditional, mainly Christian values’ for which Russians feel kinship. But, he said, ‘there’s another West — aggressive, cosmopolitan, neocolonial, acting as the weapon of the neoliberal elite,’ and trying to impose its ‘pretty strange’ values on everyone else.”
“He peppered his remarks with references to ‘dozens of genders’ and ‘gay parades.'”
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