Russian President Vladimir Putin said Sunday that many people in the West, including Americans, share his country’s “traditionalist” views on family, gender, and culture.

Putin’s remarks amplify Russia’s effort to claim the moral high ground in global cultural debates, casting itself as a defender of “traditional values” in contrast to what it portrays as the West’s moral decline, Newsweek reported. The Kremlin has long condemned policies on LGBTQ+ rights, gender identity, and reproductive freedoms, using these issues to justify its ideological divide with the West.

In an interview Sunday with VGTRK, a state-owned broadcasting company, Putin said he has been told “all the time by a lot of people, including in the West, that we have people galore who share our position, and there are a lot of them in Western Europe and in America, including North America.”

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