Russian ultranationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin, who last Saturday lost his daughter Darya Duguina in an attack that the Kremlin accuses Kyiv of, is one of the ideologues of the concept of the "Russian world", a spiritual and political concept that puts the emphasis on Russia as a pious country and defender of traditional values and strong leadership. An ideology that Vladimir Putin defends, although he is far from the only one.
He is also a theoretician of "Eurasianism" (in 2003 he founded the International Eurasian Movement), to which the Russian president would have subscribed after frustrating experiences with Westerners. However, he is not an organic or "Kremlin" intellectual. He does, on the other hand, of someone with public projection long worked from his beginnings in the circles of National Bolshevism together with the writer Eduard Limonov.
Dugin, 60, has been a vocal supporter of sending troops to Ukraine and has urged the Kremlin to increase the scale of its operations in the country. It was Dugin who popularized the concept of “Novorossiya,” or “New Russia,” used to justify the 2014 annexation of Crimea and support for rebels in the Ukrainian Donbass.
The philosopher Duguin, with his long beard, very Russian and very identitarian, has stood out for his projection abroad. According to the Ukrainian political scientist Anton Shekhovtsov, who studies the European extreme right and its relations with Russia, Alexander Dugin has turned to the West because he believes that he has found an audience capable of understanding him.
Outside of Russia, his political credentials focus on his so-called Fourth Political Theory, which consists of overcoming liberalism, communism and fascism, a populist message that seeks to mix conservative values with anti-capitalism and social justice, ideas that have been described as reddish-brown and that, in contexts such as Spanish and Italian, immediately refer to known references.
Duguin, by the way, speaks both languages, has been to Madrid at least once, in 2018, and in Italy he has frequented both neo-fascist circles that invite him to give talks and the leader of the League, Matteo Salvini, who has positioned in favor of Russia in the Ukraine war. Recently, however, Duguin has been more supportive of Giorgia Meloni, the head of the Brothers of Italy. In this sense, Alexander Dugin is a capital in the Kremlin's project to elevate the European extreme right.
