Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

Why Putin Sounds Alt-Right Though He Really Isn’t

The Russian president said liberalism has become obsolete. His anti-liberal signalling is part of an effort to break down the current world order.

June 28, 2019 at 11:40 AM UTC

By Leonid Bershidsky

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump.
Photographer: MIKHAIL KLIMENTYEV/AFP/Getty Images

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Russian President Vladimir Putin’s assertion that liberalism has “outlived its usefulness” is less an expression of his deeply held convictions than a tactical device. In a world Putin believes to be fractured and adrift, he is looking for transactional relationships with people who hold similar views.

In an interview with the Financial Times ahead of the G20 meeting in Osaka, Putin objected to two aspects of what he calls liberalism: the embrace of immigration and the rejection of rigid, traditional values.