Putin and the populists

Putin has positioned himself as a bulwark of conservative values. First in Chechnya and more recently in Syria, he can claim to have taken the fight to Islamic extremists, perhaps more aggressively than any Western nation since America overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan (of course, Russia’s Syria campaign has focused far less on combating the Islamic State than on obliterating opponents of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime). Conservative populists like Le Pen have hailed Putin’s hostility toward global institutions as a model for prioritizing nationalist independence over multilateral cooperation and integration. “The model that is defended by Vladimir Putin is radically different to that of Mr. Obama,” Le Pen told a British television interviewer last November. “As for me, the model that is defended by Vladimir Putin, which is one of reasoned protectionism, looking after the interests of his own country, defending his identity, is one that I like, as long as I can defend this model in my own country.”

Particularly since his return to the Russian presidency in 2012, Putin has portrayed himself as a defender of traditional social values, especially in opposition to gay rights, and as a religiously devout alternative to Western countries that he has said “are denying moral principles and all traditional identities: national, cultural, religious, and even sexual.” While the idea of Putin lecturing the world on “moral principles” grates on mainstream ears, that stance has also drawn praise, not only from conservative populists in Europe, but also like-minded American activists, like columnist Patrick J. Buchanan, whose 1996 bid for the GOP presidential nomination presaged many of Trump’s insular themes.

Against these shared priorities, the European populist parties almost universally downplay Putin’s destabilizing moves, including those in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea, as, at most, a second-order concern. Nigel Farage, a founder of the U.K. Independence Party and the European populist leader personally closest to Trump, has said that while Putin’s incursion in Ukraine was not justified, it was an understandable response to Western overreach.