Putin's Speech on Cultural Issues

The speech was clearly targeting at the West, and I thought it was remarkable when he was speaking about cultural issues. The West was just playing for time, closing their eyes to political assassinations, mistreatment of believers. And then he spoke, I thought, an illuminating passage about how the West had opened the way for the Nazis to tear away Russia's historical lands. So there was this historical appeal to Russian anxieties, which was, I think, totally the central thrust of the first half. If Putin really believes what he is saying here, and I know that's been one of the great open questions of this war ever since it started, then we need to keep hearing from other Western