Too many on the American political right are suffering from the delusion that President Vladimir Putin’s Russia is a land of traditional Christian values and honorable patriotism. A former enemy, yes, but not a nation that bares any true contemporary hostility toward America. They assume that most disputes between the United States and Russia could be resolved by greater U.S. deference to legitimate Russian foreign policy interests. They believe that existing disputes can then give way to a successful American effort to draw Russia out of China’s orbit.

If only these delusions were true. Unfortunately, the mistaken nature of this misunderstanding is made apparent by Russia’s conduct daily.

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Let’s start with the belief that America need only respect Russian security concerns in order to win Russian acceptance of U.S. security interests. This notion is wholly deconstructed by the fact that those concerns inherently involve the destruction of democratic sovereignty not just in Ukraine, but also in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland. These nations are some of America’s very best allies.

A particularly loyal U.S. ally, Estonia has pledged to spend 5% of gross domestic product on defense by the end of 2026. Similarly, NATO’s highest percentage-of-GDP defense spender, Poland will spend 4.7% of GDP on defense in 2025 (by far the highest GDP percentage of any NATO member). In 2025, Latvia will spend 3.65% of GDP on defense, and Lithuania will spend 3.9% of GDP on defense. Uniquely in Europe, Poland also boasts an Army built around “mass,” or concentrated ground forces. Moreover, these nations truly value America. This was most recently proven by the public outpouring of support for four U.S. Army soldiers who were killed during an exercise in Lithuania. And all of this comes on top of the extraordinary economic and diplomatic value that NATO’s security umbrella provides for America.

Put another way, these allies should matter to America. And that’s relevant in light of Putin’s aspirations for them.

In interviews with Western media, Putin likes to claim that he has no further military ambitions beyond Ukraine. A notable example of this came in Putin’s Feb. 2024 interview with Tucker Carlson. Putin used that interview to offer a highly inventive history of Europe in which Russia has only ever defended her native peoples and acted justly in that same pursuit via its 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Yet, even a cursory examination of Putin’s history lessons shows they are built on false claims. In his interview with Carlson, for example, Putin boldly asserted that Poland was responsible for the Nazi German invasion of its territory which then started World War II. Putin claimed that “Poland turned out to be uncompromising, and Hitler had nothing to do but start implementing his plans with Poland.”

The Russian leader pretended the Soviet Union’s active collusion with Adolf Hitler to slice up Poland had never happened. American conservatives should ask themselves a simple question: if Putin will lie about this, what else will he lie about? Putin’s promise not to invade our Baltic allies at some future point is about as valuable as his promises in the days preceding his invasion of Ukraine that he had no plans to invade.

The reality, born out by numerous domestic audience-focused speeches from Putin, and ideological kinsmen such as former national security adviser Nikolai Patrushev, is that the Russian leader views the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia as little more than unjustly detached Russian provinces. Their restoration under Moscow’s rule, and Poland’s submission to Russian regional hegemony, are integral parts of Putin’s dream to restore a greater Russia. Russian state media play to these narratives, shaping a popular sense that the NATO states bordering Russia do not deserve to exist as sovereign entities. This is no small concern in that Russia’s military buildup is assessed by the top Western military intelligence services as designed not simply to conquer Ukraine but to provide means of waging a full-scale war with NATO within 10 years.

What of the Russian Christian values that earn favor from some American conservatives?

It’s true that many Russians and local Russian Orthodox priests are decent Christians who deserve genuine respect for their traditional values. It’s true that Russian history and culture deserve great respect. It’s also true that, whether in Russia or elsewhere, efforts by the first Trump administration and the Biden administration to assert identity politics dogma at the forefront of U.S. foreign policy were both disrespectful to local peoples and profoundly unhelpful to U.S. foreign policy interests. But none of this takes away from the fact that Putin’s Christian virtue and his support for nominally pro-Christian policies is very thin.

We gained a striking example of this via Russia’s ballistic missile attack on the Ukrainian city of Sumy on Sunday. The ballistic missile attack killed 34 civilians. As with Putin’s July 2024 missile strike on a Ukrainian pediatrics hospital, the Sumy attack was a deliberate atrocity against Ukraine’s civilian population. The fact that this attack took place on Palm Sunday tells you everything you need to know about Putin’s Christian virtue.

Speaking of virtue, Russian LGBT legal restrictions are not, as the Kremlin claims simply commonsense measures designed to protect children from age-inappropriate content. They are instead designed to intimidate homosexuals and provide endorsement for the endemic harassment those individuals suffer every day. If American conservatives are in favor of this, they should say so.

In a similar fashion, Putin uses his own Christianity as a political tool for manipulation. He wooed President George W. Bush, early in his first term by regaling the born-again Christian with a story about how his mother’s Orthodox cross was supposedly rescued from a fire in her dacha. Much more recently, he convinced Trump’s chief foreign affairs negotiator, Steven Witkoff, that he had prayed for “his friend,” President Donald Trump, when he learned of the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt on Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

These moves aren’t evidence of Putin’s truer Christian credentials, however. They are simply textbook examples of the manipulation tactics that Putin learned at the KGB’s famed Red Banner Institute. The basic recipe for this manipulation: find or invent an area of shared personal interest, apply an example in emotive form, and then use that application to build a dominant personal relationship.

Nor is the Russian Orthodox Church a citadel of Christian honor. Under Patriarch Kirill, top leaders of the Church have sold themselves to the Kremlin autocracy, lining their wallets and adorning their wrists with $39,000 watches. They illustrate how Putin values the Russian Orthodox Church not for the sanctity of its teachings, but for the legitimation cover it provides to his corrupt authoritarianism. This was best encapsulated by the FSB’s darkly poetic murder of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov under the gaze of St. Peter’s Cathedral back in 2015.

Finally, there’s the issue of Russia’s attitude toward the U.S.

Putin makes a big show of stating his interest only in meaningful compromise and mutual respect. But the reality below the rhetoric is very different. Ultimately, Putin’s mindset toward America is shaped indelibly by his service as an officer in the Soviet Union’s KGB intelligence service. You don’t join the KGB because you believe in American values. You don’t, as Putin did, work alongside the East German Stasi secret police because you value mutual respect for human life and the fair pursuit of happiness. You don’t attempt to blow up American civilian cargo planes if you want American respect. Nor do you engage in a multi-year campaign of unconventional attacks on American spies, diplomats, military personnel, and, possibly, even a U.S. president.

The truth is that Putin hates the U.S. for two reasons.

First, because the U.S. won the Cold War and has subsequently defended free peoples in Eastern Europe as they thrive under their own elected governments. Second, because the ingredients that make the U.S. and other cooperating nations influential and prosperous — relatively free trade, military power, diplomatic cooperation, and the rule of law — all undermine the corrupt autocracy that sustains Putin and his cronies’ wealth and power.

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Like China’s Xi Jinping, Putin wants a world in which democracies bend the knee to autocratic hegemony and other nations compromise under coercion. This is why Putin would never abandon Xi for Trump. Xi gives Putin an unparalleled ally in terms of both ideology and power.

American conservatives should wake up to the reality that Putin is playing them for fools.