Alexander Dugin, whose daughter Darya was killed by a automotive bomb, is the excessive priest of a virulent model of Russian nationalism that has develop into more and more influential in Moscow.
On the age of 60, from a household of Russian army officers, his journey has been exceptional: from fringe ideologue to the chief of a outstanding strand of considering in Russia that sees it on the coronary heart of a "Eurasian" empire defying Western decadence. He's the religious founding father of the time period "the Russian world."
Alongside the best way, this strand has included a deep loathing of Ukraine's identification exterior of Russia.
Dugin helped revive the expression "Novorossiya" or New Russia - which included the territories of elements of Ukraine - earlier than the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014. Russian President Vladimir Putin used the phrase in declaring Crimea a part of Russia in March of that yr.
Dugin has lengthy had a visceral loathing of Ukrainians resisting assimilation into "mom Russia." After dozens of pro-Russian protesters have been killed throughout clashes in Odesa in Might 2014, he mentioned: "Ukraine must be both vanished from Earth and rebuilt from scratch or folks must get it. I feel folks in Ukraine want complete revolt on all ranges and in all areas. An armed revolt in opposition to junta. Not solely within the South-East.
"I feel kill, kill and kill. No extra speak anymore. It's my opinion as a professor," he mentioned.
The next yr, Dugin was sanctioned by the US as "complicit in actions or insurance policies that threaten the peace, safety, stability, or sovereignty or territorial integrity of Ukraine."
The start of Eurasianism
The work that propelled Dugin to prominence was the Foundations of Geopolitics in 1997, during which he set out his imaginative and prescient of a Eurasian empire, stretching from Dublin to Vladivostok. The e book advocated sowing instability and dissent in the US - a pre-echo of the disinformation marketing campaign across the 2016 US election.
In a single passage, he wrote: "It's particularly necessary to introduce geopolitical dysfunction into inner American exercise, encouraging all types of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident actions - extremist, racist, and sectarian teams, thus destabilising inner political processes within the US."
The e book, penned within the dying days of Boris Yelstin's chaotic presidency, turned a best-seller in Russia.
John Dunlop, senior fellow on the Hoover Establishment at Stanford College within the US, wrote in 2004 that no different e book had had "an affect on Russian army, police, and statist international coverage elites comparable" to "Foundations."
The e book prodded Dugin in direction of a tutorial profession - and for some time he was chairman of the worldwide relations within the sociology division at Moscow State College.
Dugin has at all times been one among Putin's most vocal supporters. In 2007 he mentioned: "Putin not has any opponents, and even when they did exist, they're mentally in poor health and needs to be despatched for medical check-ups. Putin is all over the place, Putin is the whole lot, Putin is absolute, Putin is irreplaceable."
Step by step, inexorably, Dugin's views have moved from the perimeter of political debate in Russia to its centre.
In 2011, when he was prime minister, Vladimir Putin started to speak of a Eurasian Union. Dugin mirrored that Putin wanted "an ideology, a motive why he wants to come back again" for a 3rd time period as president.
When Russia started supporting separatists in Donbas in 2014, Dugin was outstanding within the Eurasian Youth Union, which recruited folks with army expertise to struggle on behalf of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Folks's Republic.
He additionally saved up a torrent of propaganda by the web site Geopolitica, which the US asserts that he controls. The US Treasury mentioned this yr that it's "an internet site that serves as a platform for Russian ultra-nationalists to unfold disinformation and propaganda concentrating on Western and different audiences."
Geopolitica, for instance, contended this yr that the US and NATO sought to impress warfare with Russia, with the intention to "additional terroriSe the American folks in all kinds of malicious methods."
Not brief on enemies
As one of many ideological architects of Russian expansionism, Dugin has referred to 2 "variations" of Putin, and wrote a e book known as Putin vs. Putin.
He described the "lunar" Putin who's pragmatic and cautious, and the "photo voltaic" Putin, devoted to the restoration of a Eurasian empire and confrontation with the West.
In March, a month into the Ukrainian battle, in an interview in a Moscow every day, Dugin declared that there was "little doubt that the 'photo voltaic' Putin has received out, and that this was sure to occur, which I did not say only a yr in the past, however for a few years now."
"Russia has crossed the Rubicon, which I'm personally very pleased about," he mentioned.
To Dugin, that was important as a result of he says, the West was utilizing Ukraine to attempt to carry down Russia.
"They consider that they've an opportunity to defeat Russia; not actually, as a result of it's inconceivable, however to crush and power it to give up, by excluding it from their international system."
It was additionally important, in his view, to point out "agency opposition to the Junta and Ukrainian Nazism which can be annihilating peaceable civilians" in addition to rejection of liberalism and US hegemony - language much like that utilized by Putin in searching for to justify the invasion.
Dugin is definitely not wanting enemies inside Russia.
In a 2019 interview, he mentioned: "Everybody in energy in Russia is scum. Aside from Putin."
Dugin mentioned earlier this yr that his adherence to the notion of "Eurasianism" is as sturdy now because it was when he wrote "Foundations."
"Its centre is the Russian folks. And it's open to these peoples who mix their future with the destiny of the Russian folks."
To him, the battle in Ukraine is a part of an existential battle between the lassitude of the West and a society constructed on custom, hierarchy and the Orthodox Christian religion.
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In Dugin's world, Russia's future "is not going to be full till we unite all of the japanese Slavs and all of the Eurasian brothers into one huge house. The whole lot follows from this logic of future - and so does Ukraine."