The Attack on Aleksandr Dugin Is Doubly Embarrassing for Vladimir Putin.

This is strangely reminiscent of the violence of the 1990s, an era that Putin wanted to be over.

On Saturday, August 20, 2022, Daria Dugina, 30 years old, daughter of Aleksandr Dugin, 60 years old, theorist often presented as the spur of the “special military operation”, launched in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, by Vladimir Putin, died in a car bombing.

Daria Dougina and her father Aleksandr Dugin had just participated earlier in the day in “Tradition” a political festival in the suburbs of Moscow, in the presence of nationalist figures. Father and daughter were supposed to return together. But, at the last moment, Aleksandr Dugin finally decided to entrust his car to his daughter Daria and decided to get on board another vehicle.

A decision that would save him, because a few minutes later, the Toyota Land Cruiser in which the young woman was, exploded. She died on the spot. Videos posted on social networks showed the father at the scene, taking his head in his hands, and facing the flames.

An investigation has since been opened. The Russian nationalists close to Putin pointed the finger at Zelenskyy's Ukraine for this attack. The Ukrainians defend themselves and point to an internal Russian problem. Contrary to what I can see everywhere so far, I will not try to accompany the conspiracy theories in one way or the other.

The exercise has little interest here since we do not have enough information at our disposal to judge this.

On the other hand, I can already perceive that this attack is doubly embarrassing for Vladimir Putin. It smells bad of the 90s when street assassinations with car bombs were common in Russia. Putinism had, among other things, gained its popularity by promising to put an end to this violence.

Vladimir Putin's regime has since established a monopoly on political crimes. It is enough to recall that of the opponent Boris Nemtsov, assassinated under the walls of the Kremlin in 2015. Or that of the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, killed in 2006 on Vladimir Putin's birthday, October 7. But one could cite dozens of them both in Russia and abroad, and a new wave has even been unleashed with the invasion of Ukraine.

So when an assassination takes place outside the Kremlin's usual targets - opponents, independent journalists, rebel oligarchs, or turned spies - and strikes an affidavit of the regime, it is a challenge to the total control that is the hallmark of dictatorial regimes.

In the media, many describe Aleksandr Dugin as a kind of “Rasputin of Putin”. A sort of grey eminence of the Kremlin tyrant in short.

Let's go back to the facts: Vladimir Putin has never been seen with Aleksandr Dugin. He has never had any official position and his great work, “Fundamentals of Geopolitics”, is a jumble of banalities as old as Russia and pan-Slavism and mystical-nationalist fragrances as only the most mediocre Russian intellectuals are capable of.

When the Western media questioned him about his influence on Vladimir Putin, Aleksandr Dugin denied it to better ensure his income with conferences and paid interviews. This famous Dugin who hates “the decadent West” has only European references to quote: Heidegger, Julius Evola, and René Guénon...

In short, only European authors that Dugin admires for their contempt for democracy, their fascination for tyranny, and certain esotericism. Aleksandr Dugin is an avowed neo-fascist, an admirer of Mussolini, and who, in a 2014 commentary, called to “kill, kill, kill Ukrainians.” He had, moreover, been targeted by American sanctions after Russia invades Crimea in February 2014.

Dugin has always advocated for the return of a “Great Russia” to all Russian-speaking territories. Orthodox and defender of the “Eurasian doctrine”, for the alliance between Europe and Asia under Russian leadership, he is close to the European far-right circles too. Kyiv had banned the sale of several of his books, in particular, “Ukraine. My war. Geopolitical Diary and Revenge.”

But he has neither the flamboyant courage of Eduard Limonov nor the fierce integrity of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Aleksandr Dugin, by the admission of Russian intellectual circles, is a lounge barker and, if possible, on tour in the best European hotels, with a weakness for Italy.

What is true, however, is that Vladimir Putin's rhetoric contains some of the obsessions of the current of thought he represents: in short, the reconstitution of a Russian empire with a vocation to rule over Europe. But this makes him one of the “useful idiots” of Putinism, nothing more.

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