Alexander Dugin is said to have a strong influence on Russian President Vladimir Putin. Dugin is an extreme nationalist who strongly supports the war in Ukraine. He recently drew three scenarios regarding a Russian victory in the war.
It is clear that in the more than a year that has passed since the start of the Russian invasion, they have repeatedly changed their invasion objectives.
First, the Russians attempted to reach the capital, Kiev, in order to overthrow the government in order to “disarm and de-Nazi” Ukraine, as Putin put it.
A month later, the goal changed when Russia announced a much less ambitious goal to “liberate” Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine.
In July, they only added to their objectives, saying they also planned to capture Kherson and Zaporizhia in southern Ukraine.
On Friday, a year had passed since the start of the invasion, and at that time the situation was that the Russians had not achieved any of the aforementioned objectives.
The American think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) claims that the fact that “Russia has failed to achieve any of its stated objectives and made no major conquests since July” was likely the reason for the low profile of Putin on Friday and mentioned little about the war because there was nothing to brag about.
Alexander Dugin spoke about the possible scenarios, how the war can end, in an article on the website of the Tsargrad TV channel, which is a right-wing populist channel.
Dugin is currently a professor of philosophy at Moscow University. He has sometimes been called “Putin’s brain”, “Putin’s philosopher” and “Putin’s Rasputin” because his ideas about Russia’s place in the world seem to inspire Putin.
In the article, Dugin describes three scenarios that give Russia the option of declaring a victory, a small victory, a medium victory or a major victory.
A small victory
This is the minimum required for Russia to declare victory. Then the Russians declare victory when they control Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhya. Ukraine’s military power must also be reduced “in the near future” and the security of the four aforementioned regions must be ensured. Moreover, the Ukrainian government must recognize the situation and accept it.
A great victory
Here, the scenario is that the Russians take full control of an area called in Russian “Novorossija” (New Russia). In this scenario, Russia should take control of the same territory as in the first scenario, plus Kharkiv, Dnipro, Mykolaiv and Odessa. Dugin says it would be possible to complete the division of Ukraine into East and West. This is something that Russia can accept and would be seen as a real victory that completes what was started and then halted in 2014. He says it is probably possible to get this scenario accepted by the West even if it will be a big mouthful to swallow that Ukraine will lose the port of Odessa.
big win
Here, Dugin refers to the total victory of Russia, in which all Ukrainian territory will be “liberated”. He says that with such a victory, it will be possible to fully achieve the goals of denaziralisation and disarmament of Ukraine. He says such a victory will have consequences for Russia as the country will be completely separated from the West and will be demonized in the eyes of many countries. Russian influence in Europe will be non-existent or even less.
