interesting tidbits still came out to play. To wit:

“I adhere to that traditional approach that a woman is a woman and a man is a man. A mother is a mother, a father is a father. And I hope that our society has the internal moral protection dictated by the traditional religious denominations of the Russian Federation,” he said.

Later he added:

“If somebody thinks that a woman and a man are the same thing, they’re welcome to [their opinion], but a certain common sense should exist,” the head of state pointed out.

There’s a lot to mull over here.

Putin is a fascinating fusion of Russian old, middle, and new. A product of the Soviet Union’s strong-arm socialistic/communistic political era, unlike many products of his time he understands the value of traditional Russian culture. The most noticeable difference between Putin and his predecessors is his approach to the church.

While his personal beliefs are known only to himself and God, outwardly, Putin has utterly discarded the USSR era’s open disdain for, and none-too-subtle efforts to at least reduce, if not altogether eliminate, the church’s influence on Russian society. Instead, Putin has embraced the church and its insistence on traditional moral values.

Putin saw how Pope John Paul II laid to waste Stalin’s smirk about how many divisions does the Pope have. As it turned out, the heavenly hosts are armed to the teeth. The people of Eastern Europe and the USSR itself overthrew the Soviet regime and its puppets not through armed revolt but by lighting candles, saying prayers, and carrying out faith-emboldened quiet resistance against their oppressors.

Putin is both sharply intelligent and keenly aware of the times. While the West is doing everything it can to run the church out of town, what’s left of the church insists on emasculating itself via the abandonment of its own truths, Putin is reinforcing the church, confident that doing so will simultaneously strengthen his hand and raise his appeal to Western people growing ever wearier of weakness in the face of wokeism.