Putin’s Rasputin and the Eurasian Dream

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Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin was considered a close and influential family friend of the last Russian Emperor, Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov. History has painted Rasputin as the spiritual guide of Russia’s last emperor. Many observers have concluded that Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin also has a “spiritual” advisor. His name is Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin.?

Dugin is arguably central to President Putin’s worldview, shaped by Eurasian-focused destiny for Russia. As the leader of the Eurasian Youth Union, Dugin sits at the helm of Russia’s long-held ultra-nationalist vision. In 2014, Dugin told the BBC that “war with Ukraine is inevitable.” The same article referenced his call in 2008 to annex the Crimean peninsula.

What follows is a limited overview of an organization and the individual who founded it, based on the results of our team’s research.

Russia’s ЕВРАЗИЙСКИЙ СОЮЗ МОЛОДЁЖИ (Eurasian Youth Union) was founded in 2005 by Alexander Dugin. Other leaders listed in the organization’s registration paperwork include: Andrey Kovalenko and Pavel Kanishchev. All three men have been sanctioned by various governments, including the United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The organization itself was sanctioned by the US, Canada, and Ukraine in March of 2015.?

Ukrainian press reported in October 2018 on alleged “war camps” organized by the Eurasian Youth Union, designed to train fighters for the Russia-backed separatist movement in Eastern Ukraine. Media reports on 31 March 2014 documented an attempted assault on the Ukrainian Parliament, attributed to the Eurasian Youth Union. Oleg Bahtiyarov, a leader of the organization at that time, had planned the attack with 200 men intending to disrupt the elections that ultimately brought former Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, into office.?

The Ukrainian chapter of the Eurasian Youth Union was dissolved via court order in November 2008 for “extremist and separatist activities.” And between 2013 and 2015 the organization partially existed off of grants from the Russian government, totaling approximately USD306,000.?

Александр Гельевич Дугин (Alexandr Dugin) was born on 7 January 1962. He is a known Russian philosopher and professor. He is the founder and now co-leader of the Eurasian Youth Union, and a close Putin associate. He is also Chairman of the Committee of the Eurasian Movement. His chosen successor and daughter Darya Aleksandrovna Dugin died in a car bomb explosion outside of Moscow in August 2022.

Dugin was twice deported from Ukraine in 2006 for “interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine and encroachment on its national integrity.” In 2014 he was fired from the Moscow State University, where he chaired the Department of Sociology of International Relations, for his public support of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People Republics. In 2017, he was banned from entering the European Union, per a request from the Hungarian government.

Considered his most important and influential writing, Dugin’s 1997 book, “The Foundations of Geopolitics,” set his vision for “Eurasianism”. His writing urged Russia to leave communism behind and grow through alliances and annexations, including Ukraine, which he claimed had no identity separate from Russia, and “no geopolitical meaning.”