Putin is wrong. Liberalism is more important than ever

The Russian president may not care for liberal values, but the instinct for freedom and democracy is an unquenchable one. It can never be permanently extinguished

Mr Putin plainly believes himself to be on the right side of some great tide of events (AP)

Vladimir Putin has been rude about liberal values – “obsolete” is his terse verdict – and his remarks have gone viral. We should not be so surprised; it might have been more of a shock if he had suddenly announced a devotion to freedom of speech, the rule of law at home and abroad, and the glories of a free press in a plural society.

Still, in his first “sit down” interview with western journalists in two decades, he took the opportunity to unburden himself in quite an unbuttoned style. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was, he claims, a tragedy, because it left 25 million ethnic Russians living outside Russia’s borders (ignoring the fact that many were deported there by his predecessors from Stalin onwards in a deliberate policy of Russification of the USSR’s fringes). He believes that “all of us live in a world of biblical values”. Even when that shocking image of Oscar and Valeria Ramirez lying dead in the water on the banks of the Rio Grande is still fresh in the mind of the world, Mr Putin declares that liberalism protects the rights of migrants who “kill, plunder and rape with impunity”. Not quite “biblical”, that: he makes Donald Trump sound like Francis of Assisi.

He goes on: “Every crime must have its punishment. The liberal idea has become obsolete. It has come into conflict with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population.”