Who is Alexander Dugin? “Putin’s Philosopher”

Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin is a Russian political philosopher, analyst, and strategist known for his far-right views.  Alexander Dugin is regarded by the West as “Putin’s philosopher,”.

Dugin was born on 7 January 1962 in Moscow, into the family of a colonel-general in the Soviet military intelligence and candidate of law, Geliy Alexandrovich Dugin, and his wife Galina, a doctor and candidate of medicine

Dugin rose to national prominence in the 1990s as a columnist for the Den, a far-right publication.

Image Credit: SPUTNIK / Alamy Stock PhotoHe is said to have laid the ideological groundwork for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 in support of Ukraine becoming “a purely administrative sector of the Russian centralised state,” which he refers to as Novorossiya (New Russia).

Dugin is known to believe that an independent Ukraine poses a “huge danger to all of Eurasia,” and that total military and political control of the entire Black Sea coast was an “absolutely imperative” of Russian geopolitics.

He has also advocated for Ukraine to become “a purely administrative sector of the Russian centralised state,” according to a New York Times essay.

Dugin is the author of over 30 books, including Foundations of Geopolitics (1997) and The Fourth Political Theory (2009).