“How can a KGB officer even be dedicated to “conservative values” much less know what they are?”
Start with a Christian mother, live in the last decades of the communist regime, see it from the inside. And Russian history is filled with those on the inside, looking at it and seeing where it’s wrong.
So far he is actively opposing the importing of homosexual culture from us and the EU. He is obstructing the building of mosques in Moscow. Their paratroopers got an airdroppable Orthodox chapel, their new subs have one too. And he has warned us and the EU against the idea that prosperity comes from government. He called it a failed idea that they tried and suffered under. he has also called for a gold based trade currency so they cannot be screwed by fiat countries deliberate inflation. He instituted a 13% flat tax, deducted by the employer with no need to ever file a return. Their national debt is 6% of the GDP.
And horrifyingly, he puts his national interests ahead of the EU and ours.
He’s more conservative than most of the GOPe.
His path to get there was determined by where he was. But he has referenced his mothers Christianity as something he never forgot.
OK, you’ve defended Putin and his left-wing policies (and actions) in two separate posts, trying to call up down and left-wing as right, and nationalizing business as making sense. I am not buying it.
And as for Putin’s relations with the EU, whether good or bad, think of it as a return to Molotov-Ribbentrop.