There is nothing especially novel about this latest transmission from the philosopher of death cult politics, but there is a tonal shift worth clocking: he no longer sees Trump as a wildcard who might derail the war machine. That uncertainty (the hope or fear that the American president might change the game) is gone. Trump, in Dugin’s telling, has become predictable. Not because he is stable, but because his chaos is now integrated into the system.
“He flew nowhere, got angry at everyone, yelled at everyone, insulted everyone, and went back to his own affairs — covering up the Epstein list and attempting to arrest Obama.”
This image of Trump is not admiring. It is one of disappointment. Dugin spent years casting Trump as the great breaker, the battering ram of “multipolarity.” But now he’s just part of the spectacle. The system adapts.
So Dugin turns inward. Peace is treason. Medinsky is no longer a suspicious negotiator but a kind of General Armageddon in civilian dress. A historian-warrior who understands that only a properly militarised consciousness can birth the Russia to come. This isn’t analysis. It’s mythopoesis. A necro-patriotic delirium.
“It is time to reshape Russia into a state of war… The great war is serious, prolonged, and total.”
This is the line that matters. The whole piece orbits it. Dugin is done with illusions. Negotiations are symbolic, and the symbolism is already exhausted. The West wants war. The Ukrainians won’t surrender. Europe is mobilising. Peace-talks are either treachery or distraction. Total war is not a possibility, it is the condition.
And if Europe intervenes, as he increasingly anticipates it will?
“A nuclear apocalypse is entirely possible… Upload the consciousness into cloud servers and self-destruct.”
It is easy to mock this cyberpunk eschatology. Dugin doing his best Elon Musk meets Tsar Nicholas. But underneath the kitsch lies something deadly serious: he is preparing the ideological terrain for escalation beyond limits. He is telling his audience (Putin’s ideological orbit, the GRU-aligned intelligentsia, the Orthodox-fascist faithful) that there is no off-ramp, no return, no détente. Only victory or annihilation. That is why the only acceptable negotiation, in his vision, is one where Zelensky signs an unconditional surrender.
This is not an appeal to the state. It is an appeal to militarise the soul. To make Russian national identity indistinguishable from warfare. Total mobilisation. Not just of tanks and budgets, but of language, memory, emotion.
What’s the Play?
Dugin has two strategic goals in this piece:
- To close off the possibility of peace by recoding negotiation as cowardice, betrayal, or distraction.
- To prepare his audience (ideologically and emotionally) for escalation, potentially including nuclear conflict with Europe.
But he is also hedging. By reducing Trump to a background hum and declaring the talks meaningless, Dugin is protecting himself from the fallout if the Kremlin continues talks anyway. If they go nowhere—he was right. If they succeed—he already said they didn’t matter.
This is propaganda with built-in plausible deniability.
What’s missing? Any real theory of power, economy, or society. Dugin’s vision is medieval. The heroic men, sacred homelands, betrayal and blood. No mention of the material conditions driving war, no acknowledgement of Russia’s economic contradictions or the political exhaustion underpinning the state’s increasingly performative militarism. The spiritualisation of war is a way to smother material questions with mysticism.
The State of War as Permanent Condition
This is not a geopolitical analysis. It never is. It’s an ideological incantation. Dugin is not just describing the war, he’s summoning it. What he offers is not clarity but conviction. His audience is meant to feel the war in their marrow, to treat “peace” as a kind of moral rot. If there is to be a future, it must be forged in fire.
If Russia burns in the process? All the better. Sacrifice is the point.
