“While his stance as a defender of traditional values has drawn the mockery of Western media and cultural elites, Putin is not wrong in saying that he can speak for much of mankind,” conservative American commentator Patrick Buchanan wrote. “Putin may be seeing the future with more clarity than Americans still caught in a Cold War paradigm.”

The 21st century, Buchanan adds, may be marked by a struggle pitting “conservatives and traditionalists in every country arrayed against the militant secularism of a multicultural and transnational elite.”

Others on the American right, like Rod Dreher, a senior editor of the “American Conservative,” also wrote favorably—albeit in a more nuanced manner—of Putin’s speech. “Putin may be a cold-eyed cynic, but he’s also onto something,” he wrote.

And the Kremlin, according to political analyst Aleksandr Morozov, has been spending considerable resources laying the groundwork to Putin’s transformation into a global conservative icon.