DISINFO: In Ukraine, Russia defends traditional values for the benefit of the whole world
SUMMARY
The war in Ukraine is not just an inter-state conflict but a clash of civilisations fighting for their values. On the one hand, the collective West advocates such values as individualism, LGBT, cosmopolitanism, post-humanism, unrestricted migration, and destruction of all identities. The West also severely censors its own history, bans books and pieces of art. The post-modern West disrupted its Christian roots and started building a culture of degeneracy, perversion, and pathology. On the other, Russia defends collective identity, patriotism, healthy family, religion, identity, and historical truth.
So far, among global civilisations favouring a multipolar world and traditions, only Russia has begun a direct military conflict with the West. Others are uncertain and watching what the outcome of this dramatic confrontation will be. This gives Russia a unique chance to stand at the head of the global conservative shift. Russia is fighting the western civilisation to defend its own and other traditionalist civilisations. Defence of traditions worldwide – including in the West – needs to become Russia’s principal ideological global mission.
RESPONSE
This is a recurring pro-Kremlin narrative on the morally corrupt West which is presented as a justification for Russia's invasion of Ukraine and serves to deflect responsibility for Moscow’s illicit actions. Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine is absurdly portrayed as a war against the West and as a noble cause of fighting for the benefit of mankind against the “culture of degeneracy, perversion, and pathology.”
Western values as well as concepts which are not necessarily linked with Western values and policies but nevertheless attributed to the West in the article are intended to present the West as pernicious, immoral, degenerate, and a threat to traditional values. The narrative about threatened values is one of the most common pro-Kremlin narratives. It portrays the Russian civilisation as morally superior to the Western. Russia uses this narrative to proclaim itself the defender of traditional social and spiritual values all over the world. Progressive Western attitudes about a variety of normative issues, including the rights of women, ethnic and religious minorities, and LGBTQ groups, among others, are often undermined and distorted in pro-Kremlin outlets. Respect for individual choices is often falsely portrayed in the pro-Kremlin media as state policies aimed at propagating and imposing specific actions, such as sex changes on the population.
Ukraine is a sovereign and independent state with a democratically-elected president and parliament. Ukraine's sovereignty has been violated only as a result of continuous acts of aggression by the Russian armed forces since 2014, culminating with a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine starting on 24 February 2022. A broad coalition of over 50 nations, including Ukraine’s Western partners, is providing it with military, economic, and humanitarian aid with the sole aim to help it repel Russia’s unprovoked and unjustified aggression.
Read our analysis titled, Turning the war into a crusade, and similar earlier claims on the satanic and criminal Western elites, the decadent West, and cannibalism in the West.