The Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) members should treasure and uphold their centuries-old cultural forms of cooperation and traditions, Russian President Vladimir Putin told a meeting of the CIS Council of Heads of State.
According to him, the CIS countries had jointly completed a number of large-scale humanitarian projects this year. "You have possibly noticed that they are trying to take digs at me for what I said about liberalism. I don’t have anything against liberalism, but we have our own traditions, our centuries-old cultural forms of cooperation. Why shouldn’t we treasure them and why shouldn’t we develop and support them? There are no grounds [for that]," TASS cited Putin as saying.
In June 2019, the Russian leader sat down for an interview with the Financial Times where he shared his opinion that the modern liberal idea had "outlived its purpose" and comes into conflict with interests of the majority of the population.
