Aleksandr Dugin has been described as the “brains” of President Vladimir Putin, but some observers say his influence is exaggerated. Daughter Darja Dugina shared her father’s nationalist ideas.
“Russia has not achieved its destiny until we unite all the Slavs of the East with our Eurasian brothers”.
On Monday, the Russian security service FSB blamed the Ukrainian intelligence service for the attack. According to the FSB, a Ukrainian woman shadowed Dugina, murdered him and fled to Estonia.
President Vladimir Putin called the killing on Monday a ruthless crime.
Darja Dugina supported her father’s vision: a “Eurasian empire”, a vast new Russian empire that would also include Ukraine. They have also praised Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Alexander Dugin is described (you switch to another service) Referring to Vladimir Putin’s “brain” and “Putin’s Rasputin”. Grigori Rasputinwhich at the beginning of the 20th century had a significant influence on the Russian tsar of Nicholas II at court.
Who is Aleksandr Dugin?
Aleksandr Geljevič Dugin, 60, is a Moscow-born political scientist and sociologist who has written more than 30 books. The breakthrough work was a work called Fundamentals of Geopolitics: Russia’s Geopolitical Future, published in 1997.
In the book that became a bestseller, among other things, he explained his views on how to incite all kinds of instability and separatism in the United States using soft means such as disinformation. On the other hand, nationalism and authoritarianism should be supported at home in Russia.
In the early 1990s, Dugin founded the National Bolshevik Party, which combined fascist and communist rhetoric. He had already left the party when it was banned in 2007. In 2001, Dugin was founding the Eurasian Party.
Dugin worked at Moscow University before being fired in 2014, According to The Washington Post (You will be transferred to another service) possibly because of his comments calling for the mass murder of Ukrainians. That year, Russia occupied Crimea and Dugin was supporting pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Dugin is also the former editor-in-chief of the Orthodox, pro-Kremlin Tsargrad TV.
“Putin is everything and everywhere”
Dugin has admittedly been a supporter of Putin for a long time. In 2007, he said that Putin no longer has opponents, and if he did, they are mentally ill,
In 2019, he said that all those in power in Russia are scum except Putin.
However, Dugin has seen two competing sides in Putin. In his book Putin vs. Putin, Dugin writes that “Putin of the Moon” is pragmatic and cautious, while “Putin of the Sun” is dedicated to the return to power of a Eurasian empire and confrontation with the West.
A month after Russia invaded Ukraine, Dugin said in a newspaper interview that there is no doubt that “Sun Putin” has won, says CNN. (you switch to another service)
According to Dugin’s thinking, the conflict is part of the struggle for existence, where the exhausted West and a society built on tradition, hierarchy and orthodoxy are facing each other. He claims that the West used Ukraine to bring down Russia. Dugin and Putin have used similar Nazi rhetoric when talking about Ukraine.
In 2015, the United States placed Dugin on a sanctions list that includes Russians involved in the war in Ukraine. Similarly, Dugin’s Eurasian Youth Union was put on the sanctions list because it has recruited people to fight alongside Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
In March, the website Geopolitika, which according to the United States was controlled by Dugin, was put on the blacklist.
However, Dugin’s influence on Putin has been disputed. He has no official position in the Kremlin. Some think the influence is big, some think little.
Among other things, an academy researcher Timo Miettinen The European Research Center believes that the claim about “Putin’s brain” is exaggerated:
In his father’s footsteps
29-year-old Darja Dugina was a journalist who shared her father’s political views. The United States also put him on the sanctions list this year for spreading false information online about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Dugina also supported the war in Ukraine and visited Mariupol after it was occupied by Russia.
Dugina before the bombing participated with his father (you move to another service)for a nationalist festival outside Moscow. He was originally supposed to leave with his father in the same car, which has fueled speculation that the bomb may have been intended for Aleksandr Dugin.
The Russian security service FSB claims that the Ukrainian intelligence service is behind the murder and that it was committed by a Ukrainian woman born in 1979, the news agencies Reuters and AFP say. According to the FSB, the woman had come to Russia with her daughter and rented an apartment in the house where Dugina lived.
The woman shadowed Dugina and attended the same festival as the Dugins. After the murder, he fled from Russia to Estonia, the FSB claims.
Ukraine has denied involvement in the death.