Since the time of Peter the Great, Russia has been ambivalent about its relationship with the rest of Europe. On the one hand, you have heads of state who viewed Russia as being a backward cousin needing a substantial amount of modernizing; on the other, you have Russian leaders who purported to believe that their country was, and should remain, unique and uncorrupted by the West. Peter, Catherine the Great, Lenin, and Gorbachev were in the first group; Nicholas II and Stalin were in the second.
Putin is advertising himself as a member of the second group. Whether he actually believes his reactionary nationalist drivel is almost beside the point now. The bottom line is that his war with Ukraine–the Abel to Russia’s Cain–can hardly be described as a clash of civilizations; furthermore, Putin has friends among Catholics (the Hungarians) and Muslims (Syria). His ambition to recreate the Russian Empire consequently has no connection with culture wars; it is just old-fashioned imperialism, pure and simple.