WASHINGTON – The ultranationalist Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, commonly referred to as “Putin’s brain” for his influence in the Kremlin, said earlier this week that Russia’s retreat from Kyiv was a “temporary situation”, predicting that after regrouping, more broad campaign in Ukraine may begin again.
Dugin commented to a Turkish newspaper; the interview was reported by RIA Novosti, a Kremlin-controlled telegraph news service that is steadily intensifying anti-Ukrainian rhetoric.
“The Russian military is currently struggling with sovereign forces imposing a unipolar world,” Dugin said of the United States-led alliance of pro-Ukrainian allies. “We cannot lose this war. Otherwise, the whole world will become a great fire. “
An eclectic thinker with a fondness for the occult, Dugin has published several books calling for a broader Slavic empire to include Ukraine, as well as Moldova and Belarus.
Alexander Dugin, a neo-Eurasian ideologue, sits in his TV studio in central Moscow, Russia, in 2016 (Francesca Ebel / AP)
Putin shares these expansionist views. In a long 2021 article, On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, he used remarkable historical revisionism to argue that Ukrainian nationality was a deviation from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Since then, Ukraine has been trying to move away from its much larger neighbor to the West. Putin saw the move as an insult, first trying to bring Ukraine back in 2014, when Russian forces and pro-Russian paramilitaries seized the Crimean peninsula, as well as two eastern border regions, Luhansk and Donetsk, with large Russian-speaking populations. .
When the second invasion of Ukraine began in February, Russian forces moved to Kyiv and other major cities, only to see that their gains were quickly reversed by a lively Ukrainian resistance equipped with Western weapons. Faced with the unthinkable prospect of defeat, Russian troops withdrew to Belarus as the Kremlin tried to reconsider its military objectives. Although it once intended to change the regime, Moscow seems to have indicated that it will be content with the territorial gains it has made in Crimea and Ukraine’s eastern borders in 2014.
The story continues
Philosopher and geopolitics expert Alexander Dugin speaks at a rally in central Moscow in support of the people of Donbass on June 11, 2014 (Zurab Dzhavakhadze / ITAR-TASS / ZUMAPRESS.com)
In an interview with the Turkish newspaper Turkiye Gazetesi, Dugin once again raised expectations by predicting a new national offensive.
He described the retreat as a “purely tactical move” that would allow the army to carry out “revisions”, ostensibly a reference to organizational changes such as the appointment of General Alexander Dvornikov, a veteran of Russia’s brutal campaign in Syria, to lead the offensive in the East.
But, Dugin warned, gains in the east “are not in themselves a victory for Russia. “Our soldiers will not return home until targets across the country are destroyed and security is established, or until Zelenski surrenders,” he said.
Add Comment