Russian President Vladimir Putin alleged that the West of trying to cancel Russian culture, including great composers and writers. “Today, they are trying to cancel a thousand-year-old country,” Putin said in a televised meeting, according to state-run media. “I am talking about the progressive discrimination against everything connected with Russia, about this trend that is unfolding in a number of Western states, with the full connivance and sometimes with the encouragement of Western elites,” Putin said, continuing to say that the “the proverbial ‘cancel culture’ has become a cancellation of culture.” The Russian leader’s speech comes as Moscow enters the second month of its war in Ukraine. Since the start of the Feb. 24 conflict, Western countries have placed heavy sanctions on Russia’s economy, Putin, and other top Kremlin leaders. There have also been reports of the works of classical composers Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, and Sergei Rachmaninoff being pulled from orchestra …