Iryna Nesterova10:24, 15.04.25

Dugin is today one of the most popular guests on MAGA movement podcasts, the publication noted.

While US and Russian presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are bringing their countries closer together in the field of geopolitics, Russian nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin is trying to do so on a cultural level, writes The Wall Street Journal (WSJ).

The publication noted that Dugin is now one of the most popular guests on MAGA movement podcasts, and over the past year he has interviewed such “pro-Trump media figures” as Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones. 

“Alexander Dugin, a longtime member of Russia’s far-right, has for years urged Moscow to abandon Western-style liberal democracy and rebuild its lost empire, long before Vladimir Putin himself adopted such policies. Some analysts have called him “Putin’s brain,” although he rejects the label and says his influence over the Russian president is exaggerated,” the WSJ writes.

It is noted that Dugin’s rapprochement with the United States comes at a turning point in US-Russian relations, when Trump seeks to end the Russian-Ukrainian war and restore relations with Putin, who became an “international pariah” after a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

At the same time, regarding Dugin’s attempts, the publication writes that “it is unknown whether he will be able to bridge the gap between American conservatives and Russians who support Putin’s war in Ukraine.”

The WSJ obtained written comments from Dugin, who explained his intentions regarding the US:

“I am interested in Trump and Trumpism. And the Trumpists themselves are probably interested, in turn, in my ideas, theories, and philosophical and ideological explorations.”

Dugin’s critics, including Russian and Western liberals, as well as officials in Kyiv, have accused him of helping to fuel a genocidal war in Ukraine. They have also condemned American broadcasters who gave him a platform to address American audiences.

“He’s just a Russian fascist. He’s really radical, and I would say even toxic,” the publication quotes Andreas Umland, an analyst at the Stockholm Center for East European Studies. 

The WSJ writes that 63-year-old Dugin has long promoted Orthodox traditionalism and the reunification of former Soviet republics with a large ethnic Russian population, and, in his opinion, it is Trump who is helping Russia restore its sphere of influence, forcing the United States to abandon its role as a global superpower.

“In his new book, The Trump Revolution, Dugin hails the president’s dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development as a ‘missile strike on the headquarters of globalism.’ The book, released in February, is available in English through a small European publishing house that has long published Dugin’s works,” the article says.

Alexander Dugin: what is known about him

As UNIAN previously reported, in 2023, the SBU reported suspicions of the ideologist of racism Dugin. According to the agency, he called for the destruction of Ukraine and its inhabitants, is one of the key ideologists of the aggressive policy of the Russian Federation and the genocide of the Ukrainian people. In his speeches and publications for over 10 years, he has denied the existence of Ukraine as a sovereign state and called for its armed seizure by Russian troops.

In 2022, his daughter Daria Dugina was blown up in the Moscow region . The car explosion occurred near the village of Velikiy Vyazemy. The girl was in the car at the time of the explosion and died on the spot. As reported by Russian propagandists, Dugin himself was supposed to be in the blown up car, but at the last moment he got into another car.

The Washington Post later reported that Dugin was killed by the Security Service of Ukraine . Allegedly, four weeks before the explosion of the car carrying the propagandist’s daughter, Ukrainian special services installed a secret compartment in a cat cage and hid the components of an explosive device there. The journalists called the operation “part of Ukraine’s turbulent shadow war.” 

(c)UNIAN 2025