Putin sits at the heart of the West’s illiberal axis

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Two years into his full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin cast the war as part of a grander civilizational struggle. The conflict across the border was not just about territory or the political dispensation in Kyiv, Putin argued, but the tip of the spear in a larger clash between the corrosive effects of liberalism and the more traditional values supposedly embodied by his regime.