In the process, this strand has incorporated a deep distaste for Ukraine’s identity outside of Russia. Dugin has long had a visceral distaste for Ukrainians who resist assimilation into “mother Russia.” After dozens of pro-Russian protesters were killed during clashes in Odesa in May 2014, he said: “Ukraine must either disappear from the face of the Earth and be rebuilt from the ground up, or the people must own it. I think the people in Ukraine need full rebellion at all levels and in all regions Armed rebellion against the junta Not only in the Southeast. “I think he killed, killed and killed. No more talk. It’s my opinion as a professor,” he said.
The following year, Dugin was sanctioned by the United States as “complicit in actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, or sovereignty or territorial integrity of Ukraine.”

The birth of Eurasianism

The work that catapulted Dugin to prominence was 1997’s Foundations of Geopolitics, in which he laid out his vision of a Eurasian empire stretching from Dublin to Vladivostok. The book advocated sowing instability and discord in the United States — a precursor to the disinformation campaign surrounding the 2016 US election.
In one excerpt, he wrote: “It is especially important to introduce geopolitical disorder into domestic American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements — extremist, racist and sectarian groups. destabilizing domestic political processes in the US” The book, written in the dying days of Boris Yeltsin’s chaotic presidency, became a best-seller in Russia. John Dunlop, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, wrote in 2004 that no other book has had “an influence on the Russian military, police and statist foreign policy elites comparable” to “Foundations”. The book launched Dugin into an academic career — and for a time he was chair of international relations in the sociology department at Moscow State University. Dugin has always been one of Putin’s staunchest supporters. In 2007 he said: “Putin no longer has opponents, and even if there were, they are mentally ill and should be sent for medical examination. Putin is everywhere, Putin is everything, Putin is absolute, Putin is irreplaceable. ”
Gradually, inevitably, Dugin’s views moved from the fringes of political debate in Russia to its center. In 2011, when he was prime minister, Vladimir Putin started talking about a Eurasian Union. Dugin thought Putin needed “an ideology, a reason why he should come back” for a third term as president. When Russia began supporting separatists in Donbas in 2014, Dugin was prominent in the Eurasian Youth Union, which recruited people with military experience to fight on behalf of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic. It also maintained a torrent of propaganda through the website Geopolitica, which the US claims to control. The US Treasury Department said this year that it is “a website that serves as a platform for Russian ultranationalists to spread disinformation and propaganda aimed at Western and other audiences.” Geopolitica, for example, argued this year that the US and NATO sought to provoke a war with Russia in order to “further terrorize the American people in all kinds of malicious ways.”

It is not short on enemies

As one of the ideological architects of Russian expansionism, Dugin referred to two “versions” of Putin and wrote a book entitled “Putin vs. Putin.” He described the “lunar” Putin who is pragmatic and cautious, and the “solar” Putin, dedicated to restoring a Eurasian empire and confronting the West. In March, a month after the Ukrainian conflict, in an interview with a Moscow daily newspaper, Dugin stated that “there was no doubt that the ‘solar’ Putin won and that this was inevitable, which I did not say just before a year, but for many years.” “Russia has crossed the Rubicon, which I am personally very happy about,” he said. For Dugin, this was necessary because, he says, the West was using Ukraine to try to bring down Russia. “They believe they have a chance to defeat Russia; not literally, because that is impossible, but to crush it and force it to surrender, shutting it out of their world system.” It was also important, in his view, to show “strong opposition to the Junta and Ukrainian Nazism exterminating peaceful civilians” as well as a rejection of US liberalism and hegemony — language similar to that used by Putin to justify the invasion. Dugin is certainly not without enemies within Russia. In an interview in 2019, he said: “Everyone in power in Russia is scum. Except for Putin.” Dugin said earlier this year that his commitment to the concept of “Eurasianism” is as strong now as it was when he wrote “Foundations.” “Its center is the Russian people. And it is open to those peoples who combine their fate with the fate of the Russian people.” For him, the conflict in Ukraine is part of an existential battle between the apathy of the West and a society based on tradition, hierarchy and the orthodox Christian faith. In Dugin’s world, Russia’s destiny “will not be complete until we unite all Eastern Slavs and all Eurasian brothers in one big space. Everything flows from this logic of destiny — and so does Ukraine.” CNN’s Mayumi Maruyama contributed to this report.