Ultranationalist Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin pinned hopes on Moscow's relations with the U.S. under Trump's administration in an interview with CNN aired on March 30.
Dugin, a fervent supporter of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has long been an advocate of Russian imperialism and a leading figure of Russia's turn toward hardline nationalism and authoritarian rule.
The ideologue is also a suspect and wanted in Ukraine under the articles of genocide and encroachment on the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
In an interview with CNN, Dugin praised U.S. President Donald Trump, saying he represented an ideology that "changes the balance in the world."
"In these new conditions, I think Putin's Russia and Putin personally stops to be the main enemy, the main evil guy," Dugin claimed.
"Trumpists and followers of Trump will understand much better what Russia is, who Putin is, and the motivation of our politics," he added.
According to Dugin, Washington and Moscow have now discovered many common points. He said, however, that it may be too early to talk about an alliance between the U.S. and Russia against Europe.
"If, for example, Trump would withdraw the U.S. from the war against us in Ukraine, there could be a situation that we will fight against European globalists, European liberals in Ukraine without America," Dugin claimed, parroting long-standing Russian narratives about Washington's involvement in Russia's all-out war against Ukraine.
Dugin became widely known after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine was justified partly by some of his earlier works on Russia’s superiority and its mission to create a "Eurasian Union," a plan for the integration of Russia with the countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union.
In the early stages of the Moscow-instigated war in Donbas in 2014, Dugin told Russian state television that "Ukrainians need to be killed, killed, killed."
The same year, Dugin said on the VK social network that "Ukraine needs to be cleansed of idiots. A genocide of cretins is a given."
"I don't believe that these people are Ukrainians... They are some race of bastards that crept up from the sewers."
In August 2022, he lost his daughter in a car explosion that was most likely intended to target him.
The Kyiv Independent news desk
(Updated: )
