MOSCOW, September 24. /TASS/. Russian President Vladimir Putin is not against the liberal idea as such, but he is against seeing it as the one having no alternatives, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.

"Putin was not coming out against the liberal idea, Putin was against having the liberal idea imposed as the only one, without any alternatives," Peskov told a meeting with students from the Higher School of Economics, commenting on the president's interview with the Financial Times in June.

Few have remained indifferent to Putin’s words, and this issue is time and again touched upon in Putin’s conversations with his foreign counterparts, he said.

"The liberal idea is alive, it will live," Peskov stressed at the meeting, the audio file of which TASS has received from a participant. "It is applicable in certain places, and inapplicable in others. But it is being applied in practice to a different extent and in different forms everywhere," Peskov added.

Eventually, this idea undergoes transformations "since in its development, the liberal society faces a lot of threats that it never saw before," he said. "To some extent, this idea gave birth to the idea of multiculturalism," the Kremlin spokesman went on to say.

Multiculturalism, for its part, is already causing discomfort for nationals of Western European countries, he added. According to Peskov, with all hospitality of Europeans to the arriving refugees, tensions cannot be avoided, and refugees' full adjustment fails.

Peskov also reiterated problems that sexual liberalism may result in. He said that advocacy of non-traditional relationships was a threat to the humankind. "I think this will have very serious, extremely serious consequences — birth-rate will continue to decline, the society will be ageing," he explained. "This will have economic consequences, will result in an overstrain of the economy," Peskov stressed.

In an interview with the Financial Times in June, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he believed liberalism had "outlived its purposes" and "become obsolete." In his words, the modern liberal idea had come into contradiction with the interests of the overwhelming majority of the population. He noted that Russia’s Western partners also admitted that some of its elements, such as multiculturalism or denial of traditional values were simply unrealistic. At the same time, he stressed he was confident that liberal ideas could not be done away with and should go on existing.