High Priest of Russian Virulent Nationalism Meets with Iranian Ambassador to Russia

Russ­ian ide­o­logue and Putin con­fi­dante Alexan­der Dug­in has ann­nounced he met last Fri­day with the Iran­ian ambas­sador to Rus­sia. Accord­ing to the announce­ment on the Telegram mes­sag­ing app:

On Fri­day Octo­ber 21, 2022 Kazem Jalali, Ambas­sador of the Islam­ic Repub­lic of Iran to the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion, met with Russ­ian philoso­pher and thinker Alexan­der Dug­in at the Embassy of the Islam­ic Repub­lic of Iran in Moscow and held a con­ver­sa­tion with him. At the begin­ning of the meet­ing, Jalali expressed his con­do­lences to Dug­in over the death of his daugh­ter in a das­tard­ly act of ter­ror­ism and prayed to the Almighty to grant for­give­ness and mer­cy to the deceased. The meet­ing was fol­lowed by an exchange of views on such top­ics as the sit­u­a­tion in the world, oppo­si­tion to uni­lat­er­al­ism by the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, a mul­ti­po­lar world, the fight against inter­na­tion­al impe­ri­al­ism, analy­sis of the recent sit­u­a­tion and events in Ukraine, and sanc­tions by the Unit­ed States and West­ern coun­tries against Russia.

Accord­ing to a CNN profile:

Alexan­der Dug­in, whose daugh­ter Darya was killed Sat­ur­day by a car bomb, is the high priest of a vir­u­lent brand of Russ­ian nation­al­ism that has become increas­ing­ly influ­en­tial in Moscow. At the age of 60, from a fam­i­ly of Russ­ian mil­i­tary offi­cers, his jour­ney has been remark­able: from fringe ide­o­logue to the leader of a promi­nent strand of think­ing in Rus­sia that sees it at the heart of a “Eurasian” empire defy­ing West­ern deca­dence. He is the spir­i­tu­al founder of the term “the Russ­ian world.” Along the way, this strand has incor­po­rat­ed a deep loathing of Ukraine’s iden­ti­ty out­side of Rus­sia. Dug­in helped revive the expres­sion “Novorossiya” or New Rus­sia – which includ­ed the ter­ri­to­ries of parts of Ukraine – before the Russ­ian annex­a­tion of Crimea in 2014. Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin used the word in declar­ing Crimea part of Rus­sia in March of that year. Dug­in has long had a vis­cer­al loathing of Ukraini­ans resist­ing assim­i­la­tion into “moth­er Russia.

Read the rest here.

In March, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that the US Trea­sury sanc­tioned Alexan­der Dug­in for being asso­ci­at­ed with Rus­si­a’s glob­al dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign on Ukraine. Also includ­ed in those sanc­tions was Unit­ed World Inter­na­tion­al (UWI), a Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da web­site where Dug­in’s daugh­ter Darya Dug­i­na was chief edi­tor until she was killed by a car bomb in August. In July, GIOR report­ed that the UK had also sanc­tioned Dug­i­na and UWI, describ­ing the UWI as an enti­ty that “is or has been involved sup­port­ing, or pro­mot­ing poli­cies or actions which desta­bilis­es Ukraine or under­mines or threat­ens the ter­ri­to­r­i­al integri­ty, sov­er­eign­ty or inde­pen­dence of Ukraine.”

Glob­al media has been wide­ly report­ing on Rus­si­a’s use of Iran­ian drones in Ukraine.