Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill has said that the list of basic values in National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation should be expanded to include the concepts of "faith", "sacrifice" and "love for the motherland", while the concepts of "dignity", "human rights and freedoms" are borrowed from the West.
Russian news outlet RBC publishes Kirill's words:
"The National Security Strategy of the Russian Federation made an attempt to describe a system of values. The highest value is "life"... And then we borrow "dignity", "human rights and freedoms" from Western European philosophy. All these are good, no one now denies neither the rights nor the dignity of a person, but is it possible to put it immediately after "life"?...
Were there no values before these humanistic ideas? What about faith, and love for the motherland, and sacrifice, without which our history is inconceivable at all?
It and our well-being are built, in particular, on the sacrifices of previous generations. To those who died during the war, defending the motherland, to those who worked hard in the most difficult conditions, developing the economy of our country, and there were also victims... How can we not talk about love for the homeland, about loyalty, about duty, about sacrifice?"
The Head of the Russian Orthodox Church added that these "eternal values" "are not conditioned by the political context", and the list can be expanded further.