For Vladimir Putin, no other country is greater, or more unfairly persecuted, than Russia – which stands against constant threat from Western influence.
Such rhetoric has only increased in recent months. “They sought to destroy our traditional values and force on us their false values that would erode us, our people from within, the attitudes they have been aggressively imposing on their countries, attitudes that are directly leading to degradation and degeneration, because they are contrary to human nature,” he declared on 24 February this year.
“The collective West is attempting to splinter our society,” Putin emphasised again in March, while also expressing fear of the insiders who were turning against his country. “But any people, the Russian people especially, are able to distinguish true patriots from bastards and traitors and will 'spit them out’.”
