By Aleksey Arestovich

"Western conservatives stand for the ideas of old Europe or old America, where the emphasis is placed on human rights and the values of individuality.

Russian conservatives stand for the right of the state to suppress any dissent and pursue meaningless and aimless expansion.

The problem with Russian conservatives, seeking to shed the Western cultural and ideological influence, is that they lack any original idea that would not be a continuation or reflection of Western thought.

All the high examples of Russian culture are examples of European art on Russian material.

All those Russians for whom Europeans and Americans learn Russian to read in the original are representatives of European culture who wrote on Russian material.

All the best that was in Russia has European roots: from Orthodoxy to ballet.

Having shed the Western influence, Russia will remain in bast shoes and kokoshniks, unable to give the world anything valuable.

The only dominant idea in Russia is statelessness under the guise of conservatism. For the sake of it, the best Russian minds can justify the killing of civilians in Bucha, Izyum, Mariupol, endless torture throughout the occupied territory, and any suppression of dissent, citing the Bible.

But no matter how Dugin and Shchelin justify the cruelty of Russian ideology with quotes from the Holy Scripture, the only measure for everything is deeds and goals.

Russian ideology brings death and destruction without any reasonable goal.

What are their plans after their desired capture of Ukraine? And after the hypothetical capture of the Baltic countries or parts of Kazakhstan?

To capture and kill only to hide from themselves and others their own deep sense of secondary status relative to the West.

Western conservatives may still try to convince Russians of the uniqueness of Russian culture and the "special path of Russian civilization," but they have not succeeded in convincing us for centuries.

We know them well. We created them an empire, in which many writers, artists, poets, military leaders, scientists, and so on, were able to realize themselves.

In Ukraine, their false idea of a "special path" and "uniqueness" was broken before, this time we will break it again."