💭 ‘A perverted religion, outright Satanism’: Putin attacks the West while praising Russian values | Russian President Vladimir Putin attacks the West, saying it’s ‘satanic’ and rejected ‘moral norms’ while praising ‘traditional’ Russian values.
In his speech at the Kremlin, Putin cast the conflict with the West in even more severe terms than he had previously, reeling off centuries of Western military actions to denounce the U.S.-led world order as fundamentally evil, corrupt and set on Russia’s destruction.
“The repression of freedom is taking on the outlines of a reverse religion, of real satanism,” Putin said, asserting that liberal Western values on matters like gender identity amounted to a “denial of man.”
Putin attacked the West’s liberalism, saying that, unlike Russia, it had turned away from “traditional” and “religious” values.
At one point in the speech, in which Putin announced Russia was annexing four regions of Ukraine, he asked the assembled dignitaries if they wanted “children to be offered sex-change operations,” a practice he implied was widespread in the West.
In his two decades in power, Putin has routinely promoted what he says are “traditional values” and suppressed LGBTQ rights through a number of laws and by backing ultra-conservative movements and initiatives.