Alexander Dugin argues that Trump sent family and dealmakers to hear that Moscow will end the war on its own terms, while Europe’s “common-sense” revolt and a vast Moscow procession show peoples waking up faster than the elites still enforcing their firewall can keep up.
Host: The main story of the last few days, and one being argued over on both sides of the Atlantic, is yet another attempt by political intermediaries to settle the crisis. The American president’s special envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, went to Moscow, met Vladimir Putin, and then flew on to Kiev. Because the delegation was formally led by Witkoff and not by Kushner alone, a good many analysts read this as a major political story first and a business story only second. How do you assess this two-stop tour by people from the American establishment, and what, as you see it, are Donald Trump’s real interests here? This is hardly a matter of humanitarian feeling and peacemaking alone.
Alexander Dugin: I don’t think Trump has all that many consistent lines left. In many ways he has walked away from his campaign program. Even so, one has to give the facts their due: his basic attitude toward Russia has not changed. He never treated this war against us — a war he inherited from the previous administration — as his top priority. He backs Ukraine; they are “his people”; he is at war with us — but it is not first on his list. On that point he really has been consistent. If his policy differs from his predecessors’ in anything besides the rather theatrical packaging, it is in the steady effort to push the Ukraine war down the agenda. He has been doing that from the start: Anchorage, the whole of this year, and now these latest visits by Witkoff and Kushner. What he is saying is: Ukraine as such is not my problem. The Middle East matters, the Western Hemisphere matters. I have no intention of wading deeper into this war, of explaining it or getting lost in the details, so let’s finish it quickly.
When he sends Kushner and Witkoff — relatives, business partners, people from his inner circle — they carry exactly the message Trump wants delivered. He does not want to fight. He is not interested. Of course he is not simply going to throw Ukraine overboard, and his administration is still arming it. But when John Ratcliffe arrives in Moscow as CIA director, that is another matter entirely. That is the deep state, which treats Trump as a man on borrowed time. Trump promised to take the deep state apart and failed; that much is obvious. Which is why the conversation with Ratcliffe was a different conversation, in tone, from the one with Witkoff and Kushner.
We are dealing with two different power centers. The first is the CIA and the American military-industrial complex — the deep state — which means to fight us to the finish, until our strategic defeat. The second is Trump, who sends his own people: business proxies and the products of his family-clan idea of politics, and they bring a completely different message. Comparing what Ratcliffe said with what Witkoff and Kushner said, our leadership draws exactly the right conclusions.
The first thing we needed to get through to Trump was this: we are prepared to end this conflict altogether. That is what he sent them to hear. He dispatched Witkoff and Kushner for one reason only — to get an answer from the Kremlin about whether we are inclined to close the confrontation down. He is getting that answer. Meanwhile every Western commentary — and we barely discuss those commentaries here — agrees that Vladimir Putin’s demands will harden as our gains on the front continue. That is what is happening. The terms on the table today are tougher, and every serious Western observer says so, whether they overstate it or not. That is how politics works.
In the press the visit looks like this: Trump sent his own people, perhaps to blunt the openly ultimatum-like tone Ratcliffe had used for the Atlanticist line. Trump does not run much of America — the deep state does — but he sent his people to talk about ways of stopping the war, and he got the answer he wanted.
Then they went to Kiev. There they smiled. This is business, a deal, nothing personal and no geopolitics. They put on a cheerful show in the Mariinsky Palace, which, as it happens, was built by the Russian Empire and named after a Russian empress — a detail not without symbolism. Zelensky understands all of this perfectly well. He is betting on the Western deep state, waiting for Trump’s authority to expire or for the midterms — which are not far off — to tie him hand and foot. That is why Zelensky plays for time. He tells the Americans, “Yes, yes, I’m ready too,” so as not to provoke Trump, and in the next breath insists that the Europeans be brought in. And what will the Europeans do? They will immediately tighten every condition until the whole thing collapses. Which is precisely what Zelensky wants.
Host: Alexander Gelyevich [Dugin], let’s look at this from a few more angles. A lot of people argue that because the United States, through transnationals such as Monsanto, BlackRock and the rest, holds serious assets in Ukraine, the Kushner–Witkoff trip has a real economic subtext: an attempt to ring-fence those assets for American capital if the war ends on our terms. From that point of view, are they also traveling because Trump cannot afford to fall out with those corporations and is obliged to protect their interests in any settlement?
Alexander Dugin: That cannot be ruled out either, though I do not think economics is the main driver. As I see it — and I may be wrong — we have been extremely flexible on this point. We are telling the United States: hand Ukraine over, accept our terms, and on the economic side we are ready to talk. A strong Russia that brings this unpredictable, anarchic, Nazi “wild field” under control will be a far more reliable partner for American business than what is there now. We can guarantee that agreements will be kept and that assets will be safe.
If Trump thinks like a businessman, he ought to see that Russia is the better bet. For one thing, we are furious at the European Union’s wrecking policy, and on that point we can be America’s partners in putting the Brussels bureaucracy in its place. Once the territory is under our control, we can certainly wipe away every obligation Ukraine has toward Europe. American companies are another matter: if Washington is prepared to deal, we are ready to apply a different standard.
Still, our terms have clearly hardened. People are now asking whether a proper Putin–Trump meeting will happen — there was apparently some preparation for one — or whether everything will continue through envoys. Either way, we are talking to America more and more on our own terms. And those terms are the unconditional fulfillment of the goals set at the start of the special military operation.
I will say for the millionth time something that keeps slipping out of international analysis: the stated goals cannot be reached without full, direct military and political control over the whole of Ukraine. We cannot hope that someone else will disarm this regime while the West is openly fighting on its side. We cannot count on anyone else changing this hate-driven ideology. Our position follows from the aims of the operation, from the price we have already paid, and from the fact that half-measures will not do the job. In the hardest moments we still allowed some compromise. Now, as the front moves our way, we are prepared to give less and less.
Everyone is beginning to see that, America included. As for the corporations, we can, for tactical reasons, make a show of taking Trump’s concerns seriously and of understanding what big capital wants. We need a victory, and anything that brings that victory closer should be used. From the careful comments of people like Yuri Ushakov, that is the line the leadership is following: pragmatic and firm.
Hoping for backroom bargains, concessions, or some imaginary compromise only blurs a position that should stay clean. We are not striking deals — we are winning. If Witkoff and Kushner, even in pursuit of their own interests, help bring that victory nearer, they are welcome. If the point of the trip is to delay it, then any dubious paper will be cancelled by the only argument that counts: the war on the ground.
Host: You mentioned how close Ushakov and Lavrov are to the president, and how precise their comments are. I want to come at this from a third angle — the role of personality in high politics. It has long been said that the personal contact between Trump and Putin, and the respect for the personal element in both men, matters a great deal, especially given how often Trump has called Putin a strong leader. In principle they ought to meet — at any rate Yuri Ushakov has said a meeting at the APEC summit on 18–19 November is possible. Knowing how Trump actually feels about Zelensky, after the Oval Office and after, can one say that Trump — if you’ll pardon the expression — would rather deal with Putin than with Zelensky: more trust, more understanding, more of a counterpart?
Alexander Dugin: Yes. Completely. But Putin is a serious adversary. Zelensky is a malfunction — a leftover from the previous administration, from the globalists. Insolent, talentless, corrupt, and, on the whole, simply in Trump’s way. Different weight classes. Russia is a pole in its own right. Trump does not have to like us — why would he? — but he knows this is power, and he reckons with power. Zelensky is mainly nerve. And nerve is something Trump can afford to ignore.
Let us say it plainly: here everything depends on one man. This country is a monarchy. A democratic monarchy, a socially minded monarchy with all the formal attributes of democracy — but a monarchy, because that is what we were in Soviet times, in liberal times, and under the tsars. We are a monarchical society, and everything runs through the man at the top. That is why our head of state is actually sovereign.
America is not like that. Whether Putin likes a man or not decides a great deal. He can say, “I trust this person; we will do it this way,” and the answer is “Yes.” Anyone with a different view can mutter, grumble or clear his throat somewhere offstage. It does not matter. In America it does. Trump is a strong, vivid, charismatic, theatrical leader. What he does not do is run America. That is the point. He runs his social-media account. He would like to run the country. He has taken a postmodern shortcut and turned Truth Social into a kind of shadow White House. His posts move markets, drive the news and set the agenda. That is real influence, and I would not dismiss it. It is still not America.
Where the deep state sits, where the lobbies sit, Trump is powerless. He writes, “I am this, I did that, I am winning,” and behind him the machine does something else. They have no monarchy. It is not an accident that millions of Americans march against him under one slogan: No kings. This is a republic, and in practice an oligarchy. Reckon with the rich. Reckon with the outfits that actually run the place. Reckon with the lobbies and the deep state.
So Trump is king of the feed, monarch of the news cycle — and that shows you the limit of his power. Putin may or may not like Trump; Trump still stands at the head of America, but he is not a king. He is not the king. Putin is a king. He is a Russian monarch, a Russian tsar. He governs by will, by agency, by his own mind.
If Putin takes to Trump, that can be turned into policy. That Trump takes to Putin guarantees much less, because behind him stand the Ratcliffes, and behind them the people who make money from this war and who still read from the Atlanticist textbook. Trump is a free agent. Putin answers for what he says; Trump, only up to a point. Putin is the last instance speaking for Russia. Trump is not.
That does not mean Putin does as he pleases. He weighs the country and the state. He is a historical figure. Trump is forced into moves that contradict both his program and his obvious sympathies. When Americans demonstrated against monarchy, he wrote, in effect: “Fine — you don’t want kings, and I am not a king.” He isn’t. We have to remember that our tsar is talking to a non-king, and that behind that non-king stands the whole weight of the West. Our monarch understands what the West is. He also understands how conditional Trump’s own power is inside that system.
Host: Let’s stay with the international agenda; we have two large subjects for the second half-hour. Germany has just seen a genuinely significant event: Alternative for Germany has, for the first time, won a state election and taken a majority in Saxony-Anhalt. The right has always been stronger in the east than in the old West Germany, but this is a historic line, and an AfD candidate for minister-president has already been named. The party’s program also calls for a return to pragmatic relations with Russia. Historically, how important is this moment, and is there any reason for optimism about a future repair of ties with Germany if the AfD ever takes power nationally?
Alexander Dugin: I think this is a very important event — extraordinarily important. It is much bigger than the mere fact that a government has been formed in one federal state, or that one party took a majority. That would not matter if this were an ordinary party.
This party is a populist movement: a popular movement against the liberal-globalist elites. It is ringed by a Brandmauer — a firewall, a wall of fire, as the politicians call it — and treated as untouchable. In official liberal-globalist politics it is an extremist party: it should be banned, struck off the ballot, not voted for. It is taboo. These people are dangerous, anti-social marginals who put in question the things that now matter most: LGBT, which is banned in the Russian Federation; open-ended migration; globalisation; the disappearance of the family; war with Russia; and unconditional support for Ukraine.
The AfD rejects all of that and holds that Germany should be a decent, normal, healthy society. They are not extremists in the least. In today’s Europe, “extremism” means standing up for the family, loving children, refusing to put minors through sex-change operations, and objecting to the uglier of those parades — not mobilising everyone for war with Russia, not paying for the destruction of gas pipelines that belong in part to Germany itself, not applauding that, and not letting criminals walk. That is what now counts as political correctness. Anyone who opposes it is an extremist.
And it is a good thing, by the way, that the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance is coming back. This is a left-wing party, not a right-wing one, not conservative, socially minded — but it too is challenging this idiotic agenda of the globalist totalitarian elites. It had been in decline; now it has seats in the Saxony-Anhalt parliament. So the people who voted AfD — almost half, a little under — and those who voted for Sahra Wagenknecht were saying the same thing: “We do not like this madhouse that contemporary Europe has become. We want a normal Europe.”
That, already, is extremism. Normality is extremism. Minorities are supposed to rule. Migrants are supposed to flood in and erase the native population. Everyone is supposed to be remade — castrated or forcibly transitioned — and driven out. Every organisation, every district is supposed to put a column into the gay-pride parade banned in the Russian Federation. That is called mainstream politics. Anyone who challenges it… Yes: one is supposed to fight Russia, inflict a strategic defeat on Russia; everyone must fight, everyone must run. If you are for Ukraine you can be anything you like and no one will call you an extremist. If you are for the traditional family, you will be declared a neo-Nazi. A normal family — man, woman, children — and if they happen also to be of one race, that alone makes you a real Nazi who must be locked up and banned. That is the moral climate now.
And ordinary Europeans are rising against it — not ultra-rightists, not specially patriotic types, just ordinary people who are sick of it. In Germany they are starting to vote for the AfD, for the left, for Sahra Wagenknecht. In France they vote for the more conservative Marine Le Pen, who leads every poll and would beat any opponent in the first round or, at latest, the second. Those tired of Macron from the left vote for the other contender, Mélenchon’s party.
So in France and in Germany — two large countries, after all — a non-globalist elite is winning in the open. And the globalist elite has no intention of listening. It goes on ringing them with the firewall: no coalitions with Le Pen, no coalitions with the AfD. They are cursed because they want a return to normality — to normal European politics, culture, education and family life, and to normal relations with the outside world.
Incidentally, the AfD stands for a sovereign Germany and for an alliance with Russia. Europe has interests of its own and positions of its own, and they need not contradict anyone. Alice Weidel is not demanding radical methods; she is simply insisting on a return to common sense. This is a common-sense party. It is not extreme, not right and not left — it is a party of common sense. The same is true in France.
What is taking shape in Europe, broadly, is a new political situation: a fight to the death between the party of common sense and elites who have gone completely manic. These are elites who insist on perversion, on wars, on crimes, on immorality and sin against the will of their own peoples. That is why they are winding democracy down, hanging terrifying labels on anyone who respects common sense, and waging what amounts to a terrorist war against them. That is Europe as it now stands.
And the fact that, even so, in one German federal state the forces of right-wing common sense won — or rather, were allowed to win — matters enormously. There is also a left-wing common sense in Sahra Wagenknecht, though it is still more poorly organised. The remaining political forces are outright extremism: liberal maniacs of the SPD type, Green maniacs, utterly monstrous, unhinged people. They are simply insane. Among those Greens are people who back the most repulsive things; this is a genuine perversion of the elite. The healthy forces, right and left, are now rising together. That, I think, is extremely important.
At the same time we should not overrate these parties of common sense. In America, Trump’s team won, and at first there was not a whiff of common sense about it. In Italy people voted for Giorgia Meloni as a figure of right-wing common sense, and her policy as prime minister has not differed much from her predecessors’. So the question is how far these common-sense parties, once they take power at local or national level, will actually be able to carry out their programme.
Today’s West is run by open maniacs and satanists. This is Epstein’s civilisation. The majority of the population, in America and in Europe, is completely at odds with them. Supporters of Make Europe Great Again, and the American MAGA camp, are disconcerted by them — but these elites’ grip on the West, on society, on the media, the universities, science, philosophy and the economy is enormous, and it must not be underestimated. The fight between the people and the elites is only beginning. They now stand in complete opposition to one another. The parties that speak for popular common sense are under real repression from the totalitarian system of the liberal-globalist Atlanticist elite — this transnational deep state, which will look for any means of breaking the patriotic movement.
Host: A short question on the same subject, and then we will turn to a very important domestic Russian agenda — I would like a full comment from you there. Two points. Many people think that, given how far the European elites have decayed, they would in any other situation have been better off admitting defeat rather than going into hard confrontation, and then smoothing the edges over time. Instead they are escalating and tightening the screws. Is it possible that centrist or left forces such as Sahra Wagenknecht, and Mélenchon in France, seeing this, will move toward the right, knowing that otherwise they will simply be destroyed and shut down? The entire strength of the present establishment is being thrown against them.
Alexander Dugin: First, I completely rule out any rational correction of course by the ruling elites. These people are unhinged. Look at the faces — von der Leyen, Kallas, Baerbock. They stand outside any anthropological norm: degenerates put in those posts precisely because of their paltry intellect. They are incapable of rethinking their position. They were pushed to the front for one purpose: to radicalise liberal-globalist totalitarianism. Their job is to drive that line hard, and they will never correct course. They have had a million chances and have not taken one; they have only tightened the screws. An explosion and a civil war are more likely than a change of line from these global elites.
As for the barrier between right-wing and left-wing populists — taking it down would mean the end of the system, and they will fight that to the last. We saw it in Italy, when the Five Star Movement came close to joining with the League in order to take power. The system then put Meloni forward, a more manageable figure, to prevent an alliance of left and right populism — even though Italy is half right-populist and half left-populist, and the liberal segment there is microscopic. They have had repeated chances to take power by peaceful means, and the system does everything to stop every such attempt, whether from Le Pen or from Mélenchon. Mélenchon, being a Freemason, has obligations to his brothers in the Grand Orient, and whenever he draws near a logical alliance with Le Pen he immediately gets the harshest rebuke from the lodge. Other methods are used on Le Pen: the moment she starts running a left-leaning policy and her base among workers and ordinary people begins to grow, an anti-left, grand-bourgeois pressure is applied to her at once.
The same thing will happen in Germany. Sahra Wagenknecht, unlike the traditional left in Die Linke, has said they are not yet ready for a political coalition with the AfD — but that cooperation on particular issues is already possible. That is the first breach. Her party is still small, but it shows that left-wing populists are beginning to want to work with the right on concrete points. If that firewall between left and right populists could be removed, I think that in the next electoral cycle normal Europeans would come to power in every country. What you have there now are completely abnormal people, and that is the whole problem.
Host: The time we have left we will give to the All-Moscow Cross Procession. The figures for attendance vary: official ones speak of about 100,000; unofficial ones go as high as 400,000 people walking from the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour to Novodevichy Convent. The question is on the surface: what did this event mean? Despite a strong wind and bad weather, that many people came — what does that mean for us, not only for Moscow but for Russia as a whole?
Alexander Dugin: I was on that procession myself. There were certainly more than a hundred thousand people; how many exactly is hard to say. But the whole embankment, from one end to the other, was simply packed. To my eye there were around half a million, perhaps close to a million. I don’t want to argue over exact numbers; the point is that there were incomparably more than a hundred thousand. I have organised rallies myself, in all kinds of circumstances and of every political colour — in support of the government in the 1990s, and opposition ones — I have taken part in them and spoken at them, so I have a sense of scale. A colossal number of people came out to venerate the relics and to show their real spiritual condition.
And in fact this event matters a great deal, because the procession was not something routine or harmless, as it might look at first glance. This was the march of a Russian people that is waking up and growing stronger in spirit. In the columns, with the church banners and the icons, walked people of many ethnicities. The core, of course, were Russians, because Russia is our home and we are at home here. It was a genuinely all-Russian gathering of people around their holy things, their faith, their history, around the patriarch, the pastors, the clergy and their fathers. Almost every column was headed by priests and deacons. These were parish communities and a great mass of ordinary people. No parties, no artificial divisions — this was a real procession of the Russian people.
What mattered especially is that at the head of the first column they carried the newly found relics of Grand Prince Dmitry Donskoy — the saint with whom the road to Kulikovo Field and the liberation of Rus historically began. That liberation did not come at once and took time, but it was the fundamental step toward the recovery of our sovereignty. The very word moshchi, “relics,” is bound up etymologically with strength and might. And the unseen presence of the Russian saints who headed that procession was felt by everyone who walked in it. Our people had long lain hidden, under a bushel. One ideological teaching after another, one political elite after another, was laid over them, forcing them to think of themselves now as a class, now as a proletariat, now as a tax-bearing estate, a serf peasantry, or an atomised liberal society. Every time, these alien ideological overlays stripped the people of their real power, their sovereignty, and their capacity to use their creative historical strength fully in the building of the state and in public life.
Those relics, too, had long lain hidden, like the relics of the Grand Prince. I had the good fortune, in a way that felt miraculous, to venerate them together with Konstantin Malofeev and Nikita Mikhalkov at the moment when they were fully opened. And when holy things are opened to the world, the people flow to them in hundreds of thousands. And these were only Muscovites; people are drawn to them from the whole country, because this is our prince, our Church, our religion, our saints. And if we believe that, then they have not gone anywhere — they are with us, they care for us, and we are answerable before them.
In the face of this awakening power of the Russian element, the people are throwing off the ideological blinkers that were forced on them. Today, in that sense, no one is standing in our way — this may be a truly unique moment in our history. For centuries they tried to drive us into a frame: kept us as a tax-bearing estate, took away St. George’s Day — the peasants’ old right to leave their landlords — imposed rigid capitalist or communist dogmas. And to be genuinely Russian, Orthodox, oneself, was always treated as almost improper. Our press, out of confusion and a buried fear of this powerful spiritual principle, is now trying, by inertia, to talk down the official numbers. But it is not about the numbers. It is about the quality.
Yesterday we saw, in plain sight, the vivid awakening of our people, of our Orthodox society. And there, before our eyes, were the traditional values the president speaks of, the values written into state decrees and now being put into the actual practice of government departments. Families with children, people with banners, clergy at the head of the columns — all of that is the eternal ideal of Holy Rus. Spirit first; morality; honour; the family; love of the homeland; loyalty to the state; and an absolute readiness to defend, at any price, our freedom, our independence, our greatness and our dignity. That is what stood before us, in full strength, at yesterday’s All-Moscow Cross Procession.
(Translated from the Russian)
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