A Russian nationalist whose ideology influenced Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine gloated as he saw his dream nearing fruition.
High-ranking U.S. and Russian officials cut out Ukrainian representatives as they discussed plans to carve up the war-torn nation and wind down the invasion. Russian intellectual Aleksandr Dugin – who has been described as Putin's brain – celebrated as both President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance publicly threatened Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to accept the terms without complaint.
"Checkmate. Zelensky and his regime is over," Dugin posted on X. "Now he will be betrayed literally by everybody. Terrible destiny – to loose all – power, country, esteem, soul (if there was any), respect. And soon life I presume."
American and Kremlin officials met Tuesday in Saudi Arabia without Zelensky, who had already rejected an offer last week from the Trump administration to give up perpetual rights to his nation's minerals, ports and oil, in addition to $500 billion in "payback." The U.S. president echoed Russian claims that he had started the war – which began when Russian tanks invaded Feb. 24, 2022.
"Just before his army launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a long and bizarre speech in which he denied one simple fact, the existence and sovereignty of Ukraine," Washington Post columnist David von Drehle told NPR shortly after the invasion. "But to many observers of Putin, the claim sounded familiar. It aligned closely with the writings of one man, Russian intellectual Aleksandr Dugin."
"Dugin is a good old-fashioned mystical fascist of the sort that kind of flourished after World War I, when many people in Europe felt lost, felt like the Old World had failed, and were searching around for explanations," von Drehle added. "And a certain set of them decided the problem was all of modern thinking, the idea of freedom, the idea of individual rights. And in Dugin's case, he felt that the Russian Orthodox Church was destined to rule as an empire over all of Europe and Asia. And eventually, in a big book in 1997, he laid out the road map for accomplishing that. He's continued to be intimately involved in the Russian military, Russian intelligence services and Putin's inner circle."
Dugin also made clear that he considered Trump and Putin to be allies on the global stage by linking approvingly to a blog post on "Europe's Funeral" by white nationalist writer Constantin von Hoffmeister.
"What about Ukraine? What about the so-called 'peace talks'?" von Hoffmeister wrote. "Let’s be real. Ukraine’s a pawn. A bargaining chip. A piece on the board that Trump and Putin will move as they see fit. The Europeans can scream about 'sovereignty' and 'territorial integrity,' but what do they know about strength? What do they know about survival? Trump and Putin are playing the long game. They’re thinking about the future. About power. About control. The Europeans? They’re stuck in the past, clinging to their pathetic little fantasies of relevance."
"So let them whine. Let them cry," he added. "Let them clutch their treaties and their alliances and their useless little conferences. Trump and Putin are moving forward. They’re building a new world. A world where the weak are left behind."