What is Putin's final plan: journey to the thought of his intellectual mentor.

When Vladimir Putin exposed to the world his idea that Ukraine did not exist as a sovereign country and that it was a construction that belonged to Russia, many who knew the labyrinths in his head knew that behind these concepts there was a mentor, a guru, who had drawn them with him. Someone who had given him the exact narrative that could act as an excuse to invade Moscow's democratic and increasingly independent neighbouring country and closer to Europe.

That guru is none other than Aleksandr Dugin, an intellectual, a “fascist prophet” as David Von Drehle calls him in his Washington Post column this Thursday. “The analysis comes directly from the works of a fascist prophet from the highest Russian empire named Aleksandr Dugin,” wrote the newspaper columnist of the North American capital.

“Dugin's intellectual influence on the Russian leader is well known to close scholars of the post-Soviet period, among whom he sometimes refers to 60-year-old Dugin as 'Putin's brain'. His work is also familiar to the European 'new right-wing', of which Dugin has been a leading figure for nearly three decades, and to the American alt-right. In fact, the former wife of white nationalist leader Richard Spencer, of Russian origin, Nina Kouprianova, has translated part of Dugin's work into English,” explains Von Drehle.

The American columnist further explains that Dugin's influence on the decisions of the Kremlin is not new. Putin's favorite intellectual has been influencing Moscow's policies for the past 20 years. He is the one who created the necessary narratives so that the Russian head of state could solidify himself in power and, above all, hit Western democracies with new ideas, whether left or right, indistinctly.

“A product of late Soviet decay, Dugin belongs to the long and dismal line of political theorists who invent a strong and glorious past — infused with mysticism and obedient to authority — to explain a failed present,” says the author who compares the Russian black monk with other intellectuals who dedicated his voice in declare that “the future lies in reclaiming that past from the liberal, commercial and cosmopolitan present (often represented by the Jewish people)”. This is how he lists Julius Evola, the mad monk of Italian fascism; Charles Maurras, the French nationalist reactionary; Charles Coughlin, the American radio host; and even “the author of a German book called Mein Kampf”.

“Dugin essentially tells the same story from a Russian point of view,” says Von Drehle. “Before modernity ruined everything, a spiritually motivated Russian people promised to unite Europe and Asia into a great empire, properly ruled by ethnic Russians. Unfortunately, a competing empire based on the sea of corrupt and money-hungry individualists, led by the United States and Britain, thwarted Russia's fate and sunk 'Eurasia', its term for the future Russian empire,” stressed the Washington Post columnist.

A book he authored, published in 1997, ushered in this new era that captivated Putin's geopolitical plan. It bears the pompous title: “The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia”. In it, Dugin structures the whole plan that he has in his head and that transferred the man who listens to him in the Kremlin. “Russian agents should foster racial, religious, and sectional divisions within the United States while promoting that country's isolationist factions. (Does it sound like you?) In Britain, the psychological operations effort should focus on exacerbating historical disagreements with continental Europe and separatist movements in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Western Europe, meanwhile, should be attracted to Russia by the attractiveness of natural resources: oil, gas and food. NATO would collapse from within.”

“Putin has followed that advice to the letter, and he must have felt that things were going well when he saw rioters breaking windows in the halls of the US Congress, Britain's Brexit from the European Union and Germany's growing dependence on Russian natural gas. As the undermining of the West is going so well, Putin has turned to the pages of Dugin's text in which he stated: 'Ukraine as an independent state with certain territorial ambitions poses an enormous danger to the whole of Eurasia' and 'without solving the Ukrainian problem, there is generally no point in talking about continental politics',” he stressed Von Drehle.

The prominent columnist also wonders what could continue in Putin's - and Dugin's - master plan once he had succeeded in annexing Ukraine and moving it away from Europe. “Dugin envisions a gradual division of Europe into areas of German and Russian influence, with Russia heavily in command thanks to its eventual mastery of Germany's resource needs. As Britain crumbles and Russia picks up the pieces, the Eurasian empire will finally spread, in Dugin's words, 'from Dublin to Vladisvostok. '”

“As important as Western leaders taking Dugin's mystical megalomania seriously, it is just as urgent for Xi Jinping. Xi and Putin announced last month an alliance to reduce (the influence of) the United States. But according to Dugin, China must also fall. Russia's ambitions in Asia will require 'territorial disintegration, division, and political and administrative partition of the [Chinese] state, 'writes Dugin. Russia's natural partner in the Far East, according to Dugin, is Japan,” published The Post.

Finally, he says: “In a sense, Dugin's 600-page book can be reduced to one idea: the wrong alliance won World War II. If Hitler hadn't invaded Russia, Britain could have come undone. The United States would have stayed at home, isolationist and divided, and Japan would have ruled ancient China as Russia's junior partner.” And he concludes on this plan: “Fascism from Ireland to the Pacific. Delusional? I hope so. But delusions become important when they are embraced by tyrants.”

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