Putin portrays West as ‘satanic’

From imperialists to evil capitalists, Kremlin propaganda has had many names over the decades for western countries. Now with the Russian army on the run in Ukraine, President Putin has a new slur: Satanists.

Although Putin was once a KGB officer in the officially atheist Soviet Union, he is increasingly seeking to portray himself as a staunch defender of Christian values against what he depicts as the demonic and degenerate West.

During a recent speech at the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow, Putin lashed out against the ‘‘outright Satanism’’ that he alleged was being promoted by American and European leaders. His face distorted with rage, the Russian leader described the war in Ukraine as an existential struggle for humanity’s collective soul.

Putin claimed that the ‘‘fruits’’ of Satanism in western countries were the promotion of LGBT issues in schools. ‘‘Do we really want perversions that lead to degradation and extinction to be imposed on children in our schools from the primary grades?’’ he asked. ‘‘Do we really want to have here in Russia ‘parent number one’, ‘number two’, ‘number three’?’’

A popular Kremlin propaganda trope is that people in many western countries are forbidden by law from referring to ‘‘mothers and fathers’’ and must use numerical terms instead.

The shift in rhetoric has been enthusiastically adopted by prokremlin figures. ‘‘The battle with the West is acquiring not only a military, economic and political character, but also a religious and metaphysical one,’’ said Alexander

Prokhanov, a nationalist writer.

Maria Zakharova, the foreign ministry spokeswoman, lashed out recently at Britain and other countries that had imposed sanctions on Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, a key Kremlin ally. ‘‘Only Satanists could impose sanctions against the patriarch,’’ she said.

At the height of the Cold War, it was common for American politicians to describe the Soviet Union as a godless nation. In 1983, Ronald Reagan labelled the Communist state an ‘‘Evil Empire’’ whose abandonment of religion meant it was doomed. Four decades on, history has come full circle. But does Putin really believe that western countries are ruled by a cabal of cackling satanists? Analysts say this is unlikely.

‘‘Reagan’s ’Evil Empire’ speech is being turned around and used against the West. Putin’s generation remembers when America explicitly seized the moral high ground and they resent it,’’ said Roland Elliott Brown, the author of Godless Utopia, a book about Soviet-era anti-religion propaganda. ‘‘What any good KGB agent does is he looks at those ideas that are influential within the culture and then he tries to use them to his advantage.’’

Coincidentally or not, Russia’s depiction of its western and Ukrainian foes as devil worshippers comes as the Kremlin boosts its military ties with Iran, where the United States is routinely referred to as the Great Satan. Putin’s rhetoric also has echoes of early Communist propaganda, which denounced Lenin’s adversaries as ‘‘unclean forces’’ and ‘‘vampires’’.

Yet Putin’s attempt to portray Russia as a bastion of traditional, conservative values is not backed up by the facts. Around a third of Russian families have been abandoned by their fathers, according to official statistics. Half of all marriages end in divorce, with infidelity, poverty and alcohol cited as the leading causes in a survey by the state pollster.

Putin’s allies are also seeking to depict Ukraine as having fallen under the influence of the ‘‘demonic’’ West. Russian state media has accused the Ukrainian army of using ‘‘black magic’’ in the Donbas region, an allegation that came as Ramzan Kadyrov, the ruthless leader of Chechnya, warned that Russia’s forces were preparing to strike a decisive blow against ‘‘satanists.’’

‘‘Ukrainians are Russians who have been possessed by demons,’’ said Pavel Gubarev, a prominent Kremlin-backed separatist. ‘‘They serve the devil,’’ said Sergei Mikheyev, a Russian political analyst.

Critics say the startling shift in Russian rhetoric is a sign of desperation as Putin’s army crumbles in the face of a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the vital Kherson region. – The Times