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The New York Times noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin was trying to appeal to American conservatives in his war against Ukraine.
The news article said Putin’s recent keynote address at the annual Valdai conference was “aimed at winning over political conservatives” in the United States and Europe. As evidence, the authors cited Putin’s claim that there are “two Wests” — one of “traditional, mainly Christian values” with which Russians feel kinship, and “another West — aggressive, cosmopolitan, neocolonial, acting as the weapon of the neoliberal elite” that tries impose its “peculiar” values on the rest of the world.
But in fact, Putin touched upon many facets of American life and politics during his three-hour manifesto and lengthy Q&A, which covered a lot of ground. He pandered to various US ethnic groups and their traditional roots — Latinos, Asians, Africans, Middle Easterners, and others — and insisted that their cultures and civilizations have value that’s no lesser than Western liberal norms. He even tried to woo environmentalists by saying climate change has been pushed off the agenda to the “second tier.”
It is unclear why the Times ignored all this and focused on Putin’s love of traditional, Christian Americans in the story, headlined “Putin Rails Against ‘Western Elites’ in Speech Aimed at U.S. Conservatives.” Perhaps, editors decided, this particular angle would most excite their liberal readers. And if that’s the case, the Times unwittingly played right into Putin’s hands just days before the midterm elections.
