The killers made Dasha immortal

- Alexander Gelyevich, you predicted a military conflict in advance in an interview with our newspaper two years ago. Why was a special military operation (SMO) inevitable and why did Vladimir Putin, as you say, have no choice but to do otherwise?

- 2022 is not just a difficult year, it is the worst and most frightening year, at least in my lifetime. I would have given anything not to have it, not to have to endure what I endured, what I still endure and what I will probably never endure. The word 'year' in Russian comes from the word 'annual' and means something good, but this year turned out not to be a year at all. It was a year against the tide. Everything collapsed, everything fell apart. For me personally and for the country.

SMO was indeed inevitable for objective reasons. To have peace, you have to have a stable geopolitical environment. But with a regime in the West oriented strictly and rigidly against Russia, with an anti-Russia radical like Ukraine with its Nazi ideology and militarism, of course, it was clear in advance where things were going. What is happening now in Ukraine has been obvious to me since 2014, and even much earlier. Just re-read Fundamentals of Geopolitics, which came out in the mid-1990s. Everything is already described there, both for Crimea and Novorossia. Today we see that our president has openly and honestly admitted that stopping the liberation of Novorossi in 2014 was a mistake.

Now Angela Merkel has boasted that she deceived Moscow, which she did, but what good is that if we patriots and ardent supporters of Novorossiya were right and the authorities were wrong? What good is it? There is no good in that. There is nothing more difficult than Cassandra's fate, when you say what is going to happen and explain why it will be so, what must not be done, what it will come to in the end, you provide all the arguments and rational calculations, yet no one listens to you. Sometimes, alas, the authorities prefer to trust scoundrels, thieves, spies, flatterers and not listen to those who really care about their country.

But we started an SMO, we recognised the DNR, the LNR and the regions of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. It is not the whole of Novorossi and especially not the whole of Ukraine, but it is very important, it is a breakthrough. Our president, the entire state came together and did what was vital, what we should have done a long time ago, and when we did not do it, we only made the situation worse. Once we made the decision, which was the culmination of modern Russia, we went to war with the West. Or rather, we openly and honestly admitted that it was already underway, realised the extent of the fundamental confrontation and said: 'We will no longer bury our heads in the sand, we will defend and save ourselves, Russia, Novorossia, humanity, the world'.

Then, in my opinion, something monstrous started. It turned out that society and, above all, the authorities were totally unprepared to fight a large-scale war with the West. Now we are at war, there is no turning back, there is no way to stop it. But sometime after waging the last battle of civilisation, it became clear that we were not ready. Perhaps, in part, we had been preparing for that battle for eight years, on separate issues. Strange as it may seem, the economy is not doing too badly. Not everything is brilliant in the economy, but still more or less. The preparation here was probably better and the right measures were taken in good time. We cannot criticise in the military sphere, so I am speaking very generally, but let's see what is happening. And the most important thing is that the degree that history requires of us is not even remotely present in society, in the state of our people, in the culture. From this point of view we have actually 'slackened off'.

- Why are we not ready?

- We do not have the ideology to fight with western ideology. We proclaimed that we are fighting against Ukrainian Nazism. And this is understandable for us, it mobilises us, at least. But what's next? That is what is important. In the collective West, the dominant ideology is not fascism at all, but liberalism. And how is it that by a sudden and secret order of the 'anti-fascist' West, which destroys the traces of any nationalism on its territory, Nazism in Ukraine appeared so quickly, grew to enormous proportions and gained the support of the entire liberal world? We cannot explain how this paradox came about. We do not have an ideological core. We fight the ideology of liberalism (without fully understanding what it is and how monstrous and infectious it really is - which is why we retain many elements of liberalism in ourselves), the ideology of Nazism (without imagining how, by what logic, the anti-fascist West made an exception for the Russophobic version of Nazism) and we have no ideology ourselves.

We proclaim to fight for justice, but our society is so lacking in it that our hair stands on end. We talk about honesty and purity and our heroes, our people, our church, our history, our identity embody honesty and purity, but our ruling class does not meet these criteria at all.

I think outwardly we are still holding our own. But just a little bit more, and that's it. Everything that was thought to be the basis and backbone of our state before the Swo, is not working. Mere sovereignty is no longer enough. Change is urgent and the President has spoken about it in his speeches. He has also named these changes. He has defined what we are at war with. He has defined our traditional values with Decree 809 ('Approval of the Basic State Policy for the Preservation and Strengthening of Traditional Russian Spiritual and Moral Values' of 9 November 2022 - ed.). This is all perfectly correct, but at least it is too late, because all this should have been done 22 years ago, when the saviour president arrived in the Kremlin. Even then it was necessary to prepare for a clash with the West. Even in an ideological sense, step by step, rebuilding the deep foundations of Russian civilisation. But that’s not at all what we were doing.

Now, under the increasing frontal assault of the West, the right things have finally been forced to be proclaimed. In reality, there are only moments left to rebuild our country in the right way for the clash of civilisations; but even here I see delays and procrastination, as if the urgency of the situation was not yet perceived by our authorities. We see a president who is struggling almost single-handedly, there is a group of people who support him politically, there are people ready to rise up and wake up to save Russia, but a huge and suffocating wave of inertia prevents us from coming to our senses.

I also link my own personal tragedy - the death of my daughter, killed by Ukrainian terrorists at the obvious instigation of the Anglo-Saxon secret services - to the fact that there were two worlds. A quiet and peaceful world of existence as usual. A world of brutal warfare with a vile enemy entering our territory, killing innocent people, stabbing them in the back, attacking the purest, the thinkers, the philosophers, the intellectuals, and using completely terrorist methods. We were simply not prepared for this. None of us realised what we were dealing with.

Of course, conventionally speaking, we should all have been warned from day one of the SMO that we were entering into a final conflict with the West. We, especially those who openly supported SMO, should have been told to 'hang in there and be careful'. Every exponent of this ideology should have been protected and supported. At least a warning...

We said we’re guarding Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhya. But we had to leave Kherson. For 10 months we have not been able to advance in the Donbas, despite the heroic fight of our soldiers: both regular and mobilised units and volunteers. There are real heroes there. History is being made there. But if we cannot guarantee security in our Russian world - from Novorossia to the periphery - then we should have warned everyone. To warn our own, those who believed. This is the most difficult test. It’s such a black year, and in the end we are only at square one.

"If the war is half over, it will be lost. But I can't help but think that we are still halfway through the war."

- Do we have a chance to win? What does Russia need to do it?

- To win, we not only need a strong, powerful and modern army. We need not only a different society, not only a different culture, not only a different education, not only a different political elite and a different ruling class. To win, we need a completely different state. We need a reborn Holy Russia, true people power and a culture of mobilisation.

Yes, we have recognised four new entities, which is wonderful and inevitable. We have finally achieved partial mobilisation, but it is not clear why six months later. Our president proclaimed an ideology in his speech at the Kremlin on 30 September on the occasion of the acceptance of new subjects in Russia, in the Valdai speech. This ideology is institutionalised by Decree 809 on traditional values. We created the Cultural Front under Nikolai Burlyaev. An important World Council of the Russian People was held this year. It was also a high-level event with important meanings and a profound focus on direct confrontation with the modern West and its satanic, man-hating civilisation.

All these initiatives are fully supported by the Duma factions and the majority of the people. But despite these necessary and wonderful actions, our social, technological and psychological unpreparedness for the final and total confrontation with the West creates a terrible feeling. It’s as if a sleeping man is struggling against the wolves attacking him. He is not yet awake. They bite him, but he does not understand: is he still dreaming or are the wolves already alive? And this feeling of non-awakening, of half-sleep, in which our society and our state find themselves, creates a monstrous impression. This is the source of enormous losses. Thanks to this half-sleep, the enemy tears off pieces of our flesh, drinks our blood, eats our heart. The situation is extremely difficult.

You cannot fight a war by halves. Vladlen Tatarsky, war correspondent, said it very correctly recently. By the way, he was a friend of my daughter, a very interesting and correct person. He wrote that the Russians always lost if they fought half the war, and the Russo-Japanese war, and the Finnish war, and the Afghan war, and the first Chechen war. When we fight a war half instead of whole, we lose. We only really win wars at home when the whole nation, the whole state, is involved, when everything is for the front, everything is for victory, when there is not a single element in the state, in society, that is not involved in the system of fighting for victory. If the war is half-baked, it will be lost.

I cannot, however, get the idea out of my head that we are still in a half war, as Vladlen Tatarsky says, because the fun continues, the comfort continues, the pampered lifestyle that existed before 24 February continues. Some have fled, some have left, but how many people are left with a liberal, consumerist, bourgeois mentality! They try to exorcise the war in which we are engaged. This obstinacy, this fierce rejection of reality, is baffling.

That is why I don't know the worst year, although many good things have been done, but in terms of results, everything is very frightening. Now it is quite clear that we were not ready, first of all ideologically, and now it is a question of whether we will be able to prepare ourselves in time. We are catching up, but it seems that the situation has been neglected much more seriously than many of us thought. Frankly, we sometimes thought that the Ministers of Economy would put a spoke in the wheels, that other liberal forces would interfere in some way, but it turned out to be the opposite. We turned out to be completely unprepared to really fight with the West. Not at all. If we stop fighting halfway, we have a chance to win.

To do this we have to make such an effort for the authorities in the first place that they preferred not to do all this time. That is why the terrible situation we are in has reached this point. We are unable to move forward at the necessary pace. And we cannot start negotiations; peace is not possible at this time.

- Why is it impossible to negotiate?

- There are no preconditions for peace, and no one will offer it to us, except under notoriously unacceptable conditions. I am absolutely convinced that with our current leadership and the state of our society, no negotiation process is possible under conditions that do not satisfy us, that humiliate us, i.e. a 'shabby peace'. It is not even worth discussing. As soon as these negotiations come to discuss the conditions, our delegation will immediately get up and leave, because they will be offered what they are being offered now: to leave the Donbass, to leave the four new entities, the Crimea and also to pay reparations for Ukraine, which is unacceptable to us. This is the beginning of the conversation and we have not yet liberated our territories. So right now we have no option for peace talks. As long as Odessa, Kharkov, Mykolaiv and part of our territories that are already part of the Russian Federation in the Kherson region, in Zaporozhye, in the LPR are under enemy rule, there can be no negotiations. Peace can only be negotiated when the whole of Novorossia has been liberated.

In fact, we are at an impasse. Either we win, which is extremely difficult, or we go to the extremes of such a confrontation with the West that humanity will no longer exist, but those in the West who are aiming for such an unmanageable escalation are pushing us to do just that. If our adversaries continue to push and begin to succeed, they will bring humanity closer to nuclear winter.

- So is the situation really on the brink?

- If you have noticed, my predictions very often, sometimes unfortunately, tend to come true. Sometimes I would rather not make them, but I am not talking about wishful thinking, but rather about those likely directions and trends that emerge from a balanced geopolitical, civic and cultural analysis. I base my conclusions on a wide range of civic, geopolitical and sociological theories and teachings; moreover, we are developing our own systems - Eurasianism, the multipolar world theory, the fourth political theory, Noomachia and many others. In modern Eurasian geopolitics, traditionalist Russian thought draws from many sources. Our predictions are based on a deeper understanding of the essence of things that happen. That is why they are often correct. But, unfortunately, it’s our enemies who pay more attention to them than we do, and this is also our problem. There is no prophet in his homeland. This is more or less understandable; but then comes a fifth column, an agent of influence within Russia, who knows we are right, but deliberately tries to deny this truth, and things get very difficult.

So I have an extremely worrying view of the future. This year has been the worst, perhaps even in the history of the world. The stakes are too high, but in 2023 we are approaching, poised on the edge of the abyss. One more step this way or that way and we will either slide into that abyss or be anchored beside it, but always close to it. It’s therefore unrealistic to expect anything good in the coming year. We can either crawl back and hold on to something, or we can easily slip into the abyss. Humanity is teetering on a razor's edge. The story may be about to end.

"It turns out that Russia aspires to the same West, to Europe, as Ukraine. But Moscow stubbornly insists: no, only after me. Who would like that?"

- Why has Russophobia in Ukraine reached such proportions? To what extent is the West to blame, to what extent is Ukraine itself to blame, and to what extent is Russia to blame?

- The mentality of the Ukrainians is in a way that of the Lansquenets, the mercenaries. The history of the Ukrainians over the past centuries has taken them back and forth between us and Europe. They were under the Poles, or under the Austrians, or with us. They had a mentality that the centre had to be outside and until the 2000s many Ukrainian nationalists were choosing whom to join: Russia and Eurasia with its imperial power or the liberal West. Arestovich and many others represented a classic anarchist milieu, for whom in principle everything was equal, whether white or red, whether Russian or European. As long as there was a 'wedding in Malinovka', there were fights, shootings, looting and violence. Ukrainians have a mercurial, unfixed identity, they can be moved quite easily to one side or the other.

Before 2014, before Maidan, there was still a chance to get Ukraine on our side. Not only with the help of officials and businessmen, but also on a societal level. Despite the fact that in the beginning there was a lot of Russophobia and nationalism in Ukraine, up to a certain point there was still a chance to turn the situation around, because back then, when asked what was closer to you - the West with its liberal values that had nothing to do with yours, or us, the Slavic brothers, Ukrainians hesitated to answer and in 2013-2014 there was an irreparable shift of the Ukrainian Gulyaypol to the Russophobic side of the Maidan. We may have no idea what exactly was promised to Ukrainian nationalists in the West and on what scale, but in the end something reinforced them in the Russophobia that had always existed there. The Poles have created a Russophobic identity in Ukraine for centuries. There is still an ancient confrontation between the eastern and western Russian principalities. It’s a very long history. It was certainly overlooked, but not so unequivocal, and what started after 2014 is already a disaster.

My hypothesis is that the following has happened. The West is extremely negative towards Nazism in all its forms, and when even remote hints of nationalism, patriotism or even neutrality (as in the case of Switzerland) appear in the West itself, when someone tries to defend local traditions, religion or a normal family, a wave of negativity immediately rises from the liberal globalist forces in power. But, apparently, at the highest levels it was decided to make an exception for Ukraine and use Ukrainian Nazism in the geopolitical confrontation with Russia, not to notice it, not to criticise it and not to demonise it. The West ignored its own principles in the name of its geopolitical interests and gave the green light to Ukrainian Nazism. This is what geopolitics means. I have always insisted that the geopolitical approach, at least among Anglo-Saxon elites, is far more important than ideology, culture and classical theories of international relations. And we started hesitating with Novorossianism, with the Russian world at this time. We proclaimed it, but we did not carry it through to the end. We returned Crimea, supported the Donbas, but we stopped there. We did not fully understand the meaning of geopolitics. And we did not do everything possible to tie the Ukrainian border, this borderland, closely to Eurasia. That is the first thing.

Secondly, we did not offer the Ukrainian nationalists anything we could. At that time, we should have deliberately opposed the West and defended our traditional values that we share with the Orthodox part of the Ukrainian people. Both historically and ethnically. As it turned out, Russia aspired to the same West, to Europe, as Ukraine. But Moscow stubbornly insists: no, only after me. Who would like that? And if we directly declared an orientation on the rebirth of a great Eurasian empire headed by Orthodoxy and traditionalism, but also by social justice and nationality, the Ukrainian Landskneht would think a hundred times over who to be with. We missed all this by sending corrupt, liberal people to Ukraine as our counterparts.

Third. We missed the opportunity to consistently fight for peace in Russia and the liberation of Novorossia when everything was at hand. In 2014, Kiev was confused immediately after the coup, Viktor Yanukovych was there, and he could very well have officially asked the Kremlin to save the country and ordered troops loyal to the legitimate president not to resist the Russians. We stumbled, and the West acted consistently and rigorously. All those eight years of truce that were imposed on us under false pretences were used to lull Ukrainian Nazism, to arm the terrorist structures of the AFU, and to push Russophobic ideology deep into an initially hesitant society. Ukrainian nationalists came to Russia to see if we could go further with Russia, if we were strong enough, consistent enough, powerful enough, determined enough in our sovereignty. And also whether we understood their peculiarities, whether we were ready to come to terms with their special Russian-Western identity. But we proved neither these things, nor the third.
And the West has offered them something they could never have dreamed of. In the anti-fascist West, Ukrainian nationalism, which quickly turned into Nazism, was suddenly welcomed and supported in every possible way. After that, Ukrainian Nazism became pathological, they stopped hesitating and switched to the West, NATO and the EU. Swastikas appeared, real Satanism, and everything became a new ideology, no longer in the country and the state, but in a hellish and unnatural world with completely inverted values, meanings and ethical attitudes.

I think the main role was played by the strategy of the West, which opted for a forbidden trick. It made an ideological exception for a giant, multi-millionaire European country, where it allowed Nazism on condition that it was Russophobic. To hit us where it hurts most. Of course, we did not respond to this, as we should have.

And then the identity of Ukrainians as a border people, as my daughter used to say. Dasha has studied the philosophy of the frontier. She has been very interested in this lately, studying intermediate identities, how the transition from one people to another, from one culture and civilisation to another, takes place. And there, on these frontiers - and Ukraine is a pure frontier (Ukraine is an 'edge') - the transition from a Eurasian, Orthodox-Slavic identity to an Eastern European identity, and then to a Western European identity takes place. So we could do different things with this territory. It is not necessary to annex it strictly, but, realising the importance of this territory for our historical and geopolitical existence, gently move it to our side.

Not for nothing did Zbigniew Brzezinski say that Russia without Ukraine will never be an empire and an independent pole of the multipolar world. Consequently, Russia can only become an independent pole of the multipolar world with Ukraine. Now we have no other choice. But theoretically it could be made geopolitically neutral, and it is even better to make it friendly. In any case, to start many different processes in a Eurasian way. We simply haven't tried. Look, what kind of ambassadors we used to send there, what kind of characters we used to send there on behalf of Russia, on behalf of Moscow during the earlier stages, during the Orange Revolution. People who were strongly opposed to our President, to the Free Trade Union and to Russia acted there. Pure Russophobes. Russia was then, and still is to some extent, under the influence of anti-Russians. It is not only there, in Ukraine, that anti-Russianism has taken hold, as our president said, but also within our country there is a very serious fragment, a rock, a stronghold of Russophobia. And if Ukrainian Russophobia has a historical background and tradition, they consider themselves younger brothers and we consider ourselves older brothers, and maybe there was even something explicable in it, the family, but it has gone beyond all normal limits, it has turned into sadism, hatred, terrorism, delirium. It is already a maniacal society with which we have no way of agreeing now.

I suppose, however, that we have not taken full advantage of the opportunities we had in earlier phases. After all, this is not just about running an oil pipe or some contract between Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs. A lot depends on how we work ideologically with one side or the other, who we are in an ideological sense. Here, I think, we are forced into the situation we are in. Now, of course, many possibilities are closed, but some still remain. If we don't get smart, the remaining opportunities will be closed. Of course we will win, I have no doubt about that, but at what price... The situation is very sad.

- You say that stopping the movement in eastern Ukraine in 2014 turned out to be a mistake. And why was this mistake made?

- You know, when I spoke to Brzezinski in Washington in 2005, I told him: 'You promised Gorbachev that Germany will not join NATO'. And he told me: 'We deceived him. But who do you have to be to be deceived? The same thing is happening now. Thirty years have passed, mistakes have been made, we are all mourning the end of the Soviet Union as a terrible geopolitical catastrophe, but then Merkel comes and says that with the help of the Minsk agreements, Russia has been deceived again. We fooled you again, 'we fooled you again'. We will admit it, and they will admit it too.

Why was it absolutely obvious to me and many incorruptible Russian patriots that in 2014 we would move on or there would be a war under much worse initial conditions? Even with all our successes in the first two weeks of the NWO, the conditions in 2022 were far from the best, and we were convinced of that based on everything that followed.
The fact is that there are two Ukraines, two geopolitical territories. One is Novorossi, the territory from Odessa to Kharkov. The other is everything else: the right bank, Galicia, Volyn, western Ukraine. They are two peoples, two societies. It is impossible to take two pieces of Novorossija - the Crimea and the Donbass - and stop there. It was initially possible to divide Ukraine into two states and let one be pro-Russian eastern Ukraine and the other pro-NATO western Ukraine. This would not solve the problems of the whole of Ukraine, but it would at least create the conditions for some kind of harmonisation. We would free eastern Ukraine, Novorossia, and then unite, or reach an agreement, or restart the state at the confederal level, or something else.

In any case, there are two geopolitical realities, not the best ones, but still partly guaranteeing our interests. This has been the case since 1991, when they tricked us (for the first time) into recognising Ukraine's independence within the borders that existed within the USSR. Not even the Russian Empire, but the USSR. We recognised these borders, after which the partition of Ukraine became inevitable. Ukraine was to remain two-way forever. As, indeed, it did under both Leonid Kuchma and Yanukovych. Like it or not, up to a certain point Kiev was both for the West and for Russia. This multi-vectorism has allowed Ukraine to be, because multi-vectorism stems from the duality of Ukraine's very structure. From its border identity.

But in 2014, when Western-backed Westerners carried out a coup d'état, they decided that all of Ukraine would be Western Ukraine. As a result, the whole other half of Ukraine was attacked. And it was Russia's duty, especially when Yanukovych was there, to liberate Novorossia. I don't know how it would have gone with western Ukraine, but Novorossia, the Russian world had to be liberated in its entirety and only then should we stop and pave the way for peace. Eastern Ukraine - from Odessa to Kharkov - has traditionally treated us very well, and back then it was not yet subjected to the terrible propaganda of the neo-Nazis and the psychological treatment of the Western curators, as it has been for the past eight years. This Ukraine would not accept us, perhaps not very easily, but it would become our true border. From that moment, after the liberation of Novorossia, it was possible to speak of peace. This does not mean that peace would be assured, but that it would be possible to speak of peace. When we limited ourselves to the reunification of Crimea and the uncertain status of the Donbass, we made a military conflict inevitable. And brutal too, as we can see.

If you open my texts from 2014, I already wrote then: 'What are you doing, what are we doing? Isn't Gorbachev enough, isn't Yeltsin enough, isn't betrayal enough? Aren't we retracing the same path? We will have to go to war'. Everyone claimed that only 'radicals' and 'hawks' were saying this, that 'there is an effective cunning plan'... But my analysis contained pure geopolitical logic. There was nothing personal in it. I have no anger towards the Ukrainians, I have no nationalism in general and there was never any idea of capturing and annexing them at any cost. There are laws of geopolitics that apply, whether we like it or not.

We should have liberated Novorossia when the junta in Kiev was in disarray, when Yanukovych could safely invite and accept our troops. It would not have been a war, it would have been a ver SMO. What is happening now is no longer such. At the time it could have been a special military operation or an anti-terrorist operation to protect the territory of Novorossi.

Why didn't it happen? They deceived us. How did they deceive us, what did they promise Moscow, how did they exert pressure, what methods did they use, what structures did they help regress the Russian Spring, package it and take it off the agenda in 2014? At some point we may or may not find out. I don't want to go into it because it is still alive. Many people are still in their seats, some of them may relive the moment as a fatal mistake. I hope people have a conscience. Some believe that something went wrong afterwards and that some agreements were not honoured. Some admit that they made a mistake, like the President, while others insist that it was the right thing to do. This is a very difficult thing, bordering on the most serious allegations. Let someone else make these statements. I am now trying to be more careful and cautious in my expressions.

However, it is quite obvious that the West has imposed an eight-year ceasefire on us in the Donbass in order to create the system of defence and attack that would turn Ukraine into a Nazi state, and then set about forcibly taking away those territories it considers its own. First the Donbass, then the Crimea. It is hard to say whether they would stop there or move on to Belgorod and other Russian territories. I cannot, however, imagine us surrendering at the mercy of the victors. If we had gone ahead in 2014 and finished everything then, the situation would have been much better. Even if our military capabilities were insufficient, even if we were unprepared, we would have learned quickly. And then we would not have had to confront a people who were still sincerely sympathetic to us at the time. We would only have been fighting against the Nazi leadership that had just carried out a coup d'état. We could have done it with a smaller force. To take on the entire West, with an established, totally manic, hysterically Russophobic society and enormous military support, is a completely different situation. Here is a paragon, who is a patriot, who speaks the truth, who cares about the Russian people and, on the contrary, treats them with indifference, believing that all the rivers of blood we now pour out are like water. It is not water, but Russian blood. And our heroes who are fighting now, there is no turning back. Now we have only one way: to win, but in much worse conditions than in 2014. But if we stop again, the conditions will not only be worse, it will be the end. Everything will fall apart.

- You believe that there is a clash of civilisations in Ukraine, that some forces want to maintain a unipolar world, while others proclaim a multipolar world order as their goal. Which side has the advantage and how do you see the situation evolving depending on who wins?

- The balance of power is almost equally divided 50-50. This is the scariest moment because 50% of the world situation is controlled by the Western globalists, the advocates of a unipolar world. The remaining 50%: Russia, China, partly India, the Islamic world have chosen a multipolar world and Ukraine is precisely the needle in the balance. On one side there is Russian multipolarism and on the other side Western unipolarism. Unipolarism ends and multipolarism begins. But not everything that starts starts. That is what counts. Now it all depends perhaps on a feather to be put on one of the two scales, because right now the world is 50/50. And in the EWS it is 50/50. We are not winning, but we are not losing either. The West has proven to be very tough and consolidated, contrary to what one might have assumed, but Russia is also inherently invincible. We have not given up, we have rallied around our president. Society and the authorities - I am not talking about the entire ruling class, that is a separate issue - are united. And this is very important. We must not underestimate this aspect either. The importance that China and India attach to everything that is happening cannot be underestimated, because our victory will also be their victory, but our defeat will not necessarily be their defeat, at least not directly. Right now they are in a pretty good position to wait and see. They may not be in a hurry to place their bets, but wait and see how the situation develops.

Russia is fighting again for all mankind. For the umpteenth time in history. We have half a chance of winning. But if the unipolar world shows even more rigidity, radicalism and fanatical will to destroy Russia at any cost, it may lead to the death of all humanity. That is what is scary. Because it will not be the unipolar world that wins anyway. The end will win.

We are now in a very difficult situation. I would like to avoid this kind of talk with the West: either you let us win or we will destroy everyone, but this could be the situation. Let me say this with caution. We do not stand a chance of losing. Many people in the West do not even realise that we can win or... And then the end of the world will come. Russia does not have a chance to lose alone.

- According to you, Russia is at war against the 'Satanic West', in Ukraine there is a battle between heaven and hell. Why does Russia have such a mission and do we have the right to say that we are on the side of good, if we ourselves have turned away from holiness and God?

- We must always be on the side of the spirit, on the side of the light, on the side of our tradition, on the side of our church. Russia has historically played the role of catechumen. After the fall of Byzantium, since the 15th century, we have embodied the role of the retainer. The retainer is, according to the interpretation of the Holy Fathers, the Orthodox Empire, and therefore the Orthodox Emperor. It is part of our tradition. It is the Emperor and the Empire that do not allow the Antichrist to come into the world. Modern Western civilisation is a classic civilisation of the Antichrist. There is the destruction of the family, of all traditional institutions, the complete breakdown of morality, the abandonment of religiosity, the end of man. Western futurologists predict very soon, in the next decade, the transfer of the initiative to artificial intelligence. The civilisation of the Antichrist in the West has had long phases, evolving over several centuries. Now it has reached an evident climax. You could say it is a metaphor, but to a believer it is not a metaphor. It is a description of the way things are essentially and no one can face the Antichrist without divine help. So when we fight against Western civilisation, when we challenge it, we naturally find ourselves on the side of light and good. Even if we do not deserve it. That is the important thing.

Even our confrontation with the West during the Soviet period was an echo of the catechetical mission. The 'holy' beginning was justice and the will to oppose satanic capitalism, the civilisation of Mammon, the golden calf. Yes, Bolshevism was a heretical current from a strictly orthodox point of view. Atheism and materialism reigned supreme, but we realised that there was something in our society, in our state, that fundamentally distinguished us from the peoples of the West. And as long as we felt this difference, this predestination, this mission, we had a strong, beautiful and developing state. When we started looking down on the West and comparing ourselves to it, when we fell into its cult during the last stages of the USSR, we prepared for our further decline.

As for whether we have the right to claim that 'we are on the side of good'. Strictly speaking, of course, we are not worthy of it. But we are at war with pure evil. Western civilisation today is pure, absolute evil. Without nuance. It is not just another form of historical path, it is not another religion, it is already anti-religion, pure Satanism. Only a luminous angel can compete with Satan. Russia in its origins, in its roots, in its dreams, in the prophecies of the Russian elders, has always prepared for this mission.

In Russian history, we are always dealing with a paradox. Alexander Blok saw both Russia as holy and Russia as sinful, but he understood it as an inseparable unity. He said: 'It is easy to love the holy. To love that which has fallen. Fallen Russia was seen by him as fallen Sophia. But it is important not to turn away from it, not to despise it, but to see through its fall the tender light of Russian holiness, Russian goodness.

Our people, our state, our society, in spite of everything, had a great mission: it gives us the strength to live and endure the immeasurable suffering we have endured for centuries. We are Christ's people and our existence is his cross.

No society lives to satisfy simple needs - domestic, bodily, desire for comfort, wealth, prosperity. At the heart of every nation is a higher purpose. Our goal was this: to be on the side of God in the end times, on the side of the light in opposition to the Antichrist. This is the role of the catechumen, the retainer. The mission was fully transferred to us with the title of tsar under Ivan IV, but already under Ivan III, under Vasili III, the idea began to form that Russia inherited the mission of the Third Rome from Byzantium and this mission is the only thing that can explain who we are. We are indeed the steadfast ones and today we are called upon to prove this quality in the most serious test.

Of course, there are huge layers, layers of alienation from the deep sleep of the bogatyr, the ugly effects of Western influence itself. But essentially, at our core, we are catechised. SMO is the war of the guardian against the son of perdition.

- How should Russia change and transform itself?

- The most important thing is to find the centre of gravity in Russia itself. We are always looking for reference points outside ourselves, sometimes in the West, sometimes to a lesser extent in the East. We are attracted, inspired, mesmerised by something external, something exotic. We always go somewhere in search of something that we do not have in ourselves.

We have to get rid of this vector. We have to find the centre of attraction, the inspiration in ourselves. We must understand that Russian culture, Russian civilisation, Russian identity, the Russian mission are the source of a fundamental and profound transformation, of light, happiness and joy. That is, we must rediscover ourselves. To do so, we must purify ourselves, transform ourselves, resurrect ourselves. This resurrected Russia, not under the influence of external influences, but within itself, must find the source of its own being. The search for true existence within Russia itself, within the people, within the Russian heart: this is the main task.

Everything else, including the technical, economic, social and political institutions, will conform to this process. We must now establish ourselves at the centre of ourselves, without imposing ourselves on others. Some may be close to this, some may not, but we must build a Russian civilisation that has its centre of gravity immanent, that is, within itself. Then we will enjoy being Russian, being Eurasian, and the nations that are with us will feel it. Even the Chechens now understand much better the religious significance of the campaign we are conducting. They understand both the Russian and the spiritual meaning of the NWO. They themselves are on the side of catechism and serve it faithfully. It is therefore not about nationalism, nor is it about pride. It is about humble service and the fulfilment of the great sacrificial duty of the Russian people to all humanity, but to fulfil it, we must not run towards this humanity, but focus on ourselves, we must become ourselves. Then we will fulfil our duty and realise our mission, open to all, because the Russian heart is open to all. This is not arrogance, on the contrary, it is a sacrifice. We make this sacrifice now and it should awaken us to purification. Not to hatred, not to revenge, not to cruelty, even if this is the enemy, but we must overcome it, overcome it and truly open the way to the goodness of heaven.

We have completely forgotten about the sky. We live only by the earth, by certain underground processes: gasification, subways, oil, ammonia. We are too deeply rooted in the industrial soil and the digital jungle of virtuality is killing us, soiling us, completely dissipating us. We must learn to look up again, to look at the sun, the luminary, and even higher, the heavenly throne of the creator of the world. We must restore verticality in ourselves and this vertical dimension will be our main axis and the path of our rebirth. In fact, our ideology should be the idea of a universal resurrection. The resurrection of the dead, but not only. The dead, in fact, are not the only ones in need of resurrection. In this sense, a universal resurrection concerns both the living and the dead. The living, perhaps, even to a greater extent. Resurrection Russia is what should be at the core of our politics and ideology. We must resurrect the Third Rome within ourselves. We must re-create, revive, discover in our innermost being, in our core, the catechon that holds, be faithful to it to the end and fulfil the will of the heavenly powers.

- We began by saying that this has also been a tragic year for you. What is known about the investigation into Dasha's death, is there any new information?

- We know that the perpetrator is a Ukrainian subversive and reconnaissance group (DRG) operating in the Russian Federation. They carried out the attack. This has been proven. As far as I know, it has emerged that they received a direct order from the Ukrainian GUR (Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defence), from Kirill Budanov. Zelensky was aware of this. They were preparing a covert intelligence operation in advance. These were liberal traitors who had turned to radical Russophobia and outright Nazism, such as Ilya Ponomarev (an individual acting as a foreign agent).

It was the beginning of a terrorist war against Russia organised by the Ukrainians. They were looking for a symbolic figure. The question is whether they were aiming at me, as many believe, or whether they wanted to do worse, because what they did to me is much worse than if they had killed me, but what is certain is that they were targeting the Dugins. The goal was to hit me, my daughter. She is my heart and how can I live without a heart...?

Now, when they start investigating deeper, there is a British trace, because in reality I was not as important a symbolic target for Ukraine as many others in Russia. This time I did not actively participate in the propaganda. Yes, I supported the SMO, I always said that war will happen sooner or later, that it is inevitable, but this time I was not on the front line. I was openly expressing my point of view, but it was not shown to me on all channels.

So for the Ukrainians I was not the first, second or third target, I was the hundredth.

For the British, for the CIA, for the radical supporters of uncontrolled escalation, this goal was important. They understood that ideological change in Russia was inevitable, that our state simply could not exist in the state it was in now, that it would be forced to take a more serious and fully Russian stance. And here it was important to hit the very Russian meanings, the Russian Logos.

And at the same time, with this act of terrorism, they started a series of attacks, which followed one another in a certain sequence. Then came the Nord Stream 2 explosion to get us away from Europe, then the attack on the Crimean bridge, then the attack on the Black Sea Fleet base, the shooting down of Ukrainian missiles in Poland and Zelensky's call for the start of a nuclear war against Russia. It all fits the logic of escalation.

The first was an attack on civilians inside Russia, near Moscow, to start a full-fledged terrorist campaign, and then a series of attacks, some of which the Ukrainians failed to carry out. They were carried out by the British. Consequently, the logic is quite obvious, as is the fact that Ukrainian liberal circles were used as a cover for the information. In the West, the campaign was prepared in advance and launched immediately. Even in Russia itself, there are scoundrels trying to belittle the work of my daughter, who is a true heroine, as President Putin fully recognised when he awarded her a posthumous state prize. Of course, these scoundrels are very few, but they exist.

So everything has been purposefully prepared. This attack is part of a logical chain of those forces in the West that want an unmanageable escalation of relations with Russia. There are more moderate forces. They, too, are enemies, because their goal is to destroy us, to make us not exist at all, but some pursue this goal radically and quickly, perceiving our weakness, they want to finish us off, while others think more realistically and believe that we would rather be destroyed by negotiations than by a direct and brutal escalation.

This is the level at which the investigation stopped. It has been established who did it. The clients, represented by the Ukrainian leadership of Zelensky and Budanov, are also transparently traced. As for the MI6 trail, it is more complicated, I cannot say anything precise. But it fits into a chain, which some of our analysts trace very consistently. The investigation continues, it is not over, new circumstances are discovered, new figures and accomplices, direct and indirect, emerge. The case is very serious because there has never been another terrorist attack of this type. There was only one. No one was a victim of such a terrorist attack except my daughter, me and my family. If it had been the beginning of a range of terrorist attacks, that would have been another matter. But they killed my daughter and that was that. And then they attacked other targets: the Crimean bridge, Nord Stream 2, the Black Sea Fleet base. Of course, other terrorist attacks were also being prepared: arson attacks, attacks on our planes, on airfields, including the nuclear triad, on oil refineries, on railway tracks, the bombing of peaceful cities - both new and old subjects of Russia. Clearly this is a harsh confrontation, but personal terror has only touched me. This choice is certainly not accidental.

Another thing is that this contrasts with the attitude towards me in the West and here. In the West I am known to many people and am considered the most serious enemy of liberalism. An ideological enemy, a philosopher and ideologue of an alternative world order - a theorist of Eurasianism, of Noomachia, of the fourth political theory, of the theory of a multipolar world. In our society there are different people and there are different attitudes towards my ideas. There are, of course, many people who feel strongly about what happened to Dasha, and are sincerely sympathetic to her, and this is not going anywhere. Time passes and her pure image only becomes more and more shrill and pure. Some schools and educational institutions have introduced "Daria Dugina's Lessons of Courage". People relentlessly send poems and songs, write paintings, sculpt busts, create sketches of monuments. The mayor of Yasnogorsk in the Tula region named one of the city's new streets after Daria Dugina. The Mira Terada Anti-Repression Fund established an annual award in Dasha's name. Commemorative evenings are organised regularly. Productions (such as Eduard Boyakov's New Theatre) and academic conferences, concerts and exhibitions are dedicated to her.

The memory, the love, the compassion of so many people are alive. I recently attended the opening of an exhibition at the State Duma on Russia's heroic history from the Great Patriotic War to World War II, and there was a portrait of Dasha. Tatyana Ponomarenko-Leverash, an artist originally from Ukraine, depicted Dasha in a panorama of heroes of the Russian world. The opening was solemn, everyone understood what it was about. It was important. It shows that they care about my daughter's fate, my fate, the fate of the Russian world and their own fate. Who are we all if not the Russian world?

Another issue is that, under Western influence, many have forgotten this and have tried not to think about it. There are those who are overwhelmed by their own problems, barely making ends meet, those who are absorbed in greed and the pursuit of easy money and comfort, those who have taken for granted those forms of cultural genocide that have befallen our country in the course of Western liberal reforms, and those who have simply exploited the situation for personal enrichment.

Some have forgotten that we are Russians and are so horribly reminded by our enemies. They may have wanted to kill my daughter Dasha, but they made her immortal.

Interview by Olga Vandysheva (BUSINESS Online)