VLADIVOSTOK, September 12. /TASS/. The West began attempting to paint Russia as an “evil empire” long before the term was infamously used by US President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, possibly as far back as the Middle Ages when the West made failed attempts at the forced Catholicization of Orthodox Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in fielding questions at a plenary session of the Eastern Economic Forum, which is being held in Vladivostok on September 10-13.

"Of course, the West has long sought to, let’s say, Catholicize Russia, to drag it there, under the [jurisdiction of the] Holy See. When it failed, it started looking for various means to depict our country as some kind of 'evil empire.' It was Reagan who coined the term, but in practice it has been going on ever since the Middle Ages, and maybe even longer," he said.

As Putin noted, everything that concerns relations between Russia and the West "is connected with the geopolitical interests of Western countries."

"Such attacks on all fronts, including those in the ideological realm, are a continuation of this [historically rooted] geopolitical confrontation," he pointed out.