Vladimir Putin's twisted dream of a new Russian empire stretching 10,000 miles encompassing Britain & Europe

VLADIMIR Putin's twisted vision of Eurasia as an enormous Russian empire of influence, with Moscow's power covering all of Europe and much of Asia, is helping to drive his bloody war in Ukraine.

Putin's dreams of a broader Eurasia go back far before the recent invasion of his neighbour and may point to the Russian president's next move.



Eurasianism as a theory emerged from the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917. This put forwards that Russia was the centre of a huge circle of influence including the peoples of Central Asia.

In 1920, Russian writer Nikolai Trubetzkoy published "Europe and Humanity", slamming what he called Western colonialism and Eurocentrism.

He called on Russians to look not to Europe but to the "legacy of Ghengis Khan" to create a greater Russian-Eurasian state spanning Europe and Asia.

Trubetzkoy called for a new Russian empire built not on communism, but on the Russian Orthodox church, which would hold power over the whole of Eurasia.

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Eurasianism was heavily suppressed by the Soviet Union due to its anti-communist ideas, but survived underground, and enjoyed a resurgence during the final days of the USSR in the late 80s when the government allowed a small degree of free speech.

Among those it was pushed by were Lev Gumilyov, a geographer who spent 13 years in Soviet gulags.

He called for "ethnogenesis", the theory that an ethnic group, under a powerful leader, could develop into a "super-ethnos" – a power spread over a huge geographical area.

His ideas were taken further by the neo-Nazi Russian mystic Aleksandr Dugin.

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In 1997, the Rasputin-like figure published his 600-page "The Foundations of Geopolitics".

Among his bizarre theories, Dugin signalled Russia's future relationship with Ukraine with chilling undertones of today's war.

Ukraine's very existence, he claimed, was a "huge danger to all of Eurasia".

For Russia to realise its true military might, it needed total military and political control of the north coast of the Black Sea.

Ukraine had to be reduced to just an "administrative sector" of Russia.

Dugin also argued that Russia's new enemy wasn't just Europe, but the entire "Atlantic" world led by the US.

To finally build an open Eurasia – from Lisbon to Vladivostok

He said that Russia's Orthodox Church could be harnessed against the "decadence" of the West, ahead of a broader geopolitical clash of civilisations.

Dugin also mapped out a broader game plan to bring down the two great enemies: the US and the UK.

In The Foundations of Geopolitics, Dugin set out how Russian agents should sow division and chaos in the US on grounds of race, religion, and political differences, pushing Washington to become ever more isolationist.

Meanwhile, in the UK, these so-called 'psy-ops' missions would stir up historic rifts with continental Europe, as well as separatist movements in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

Western Europe would be more drawn into Moscow's axis with the lure of cheap natural gas and oil.

EURASIAN DREAMS

Dugin is likely delighted that Putin appears to have followed his advice.

The US appears more politically divided than it has in decades, while on both sides of the Brexit debate, the gap remains as wide as it's ever been.

Meanwhile, Germany has been slammed for its slow response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, down in no small part to its reliance on Moscow's natural resources.

President Putin has also looked to put this idea of a broader Eurasia into place.

In 2000, he created the Eurasian Economic Community, a rival to the European Union, to bring about closer cooperation between former Soviet states.

Renamed the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) in 2014, it includes Russia and the pro-Putin governments in Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan.

Plans exist to expand the EEU to include Mongolia, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.

Ukraine to Putin exists as a buffer state between two of the major Eurasian powers, Russia and the European Union.

It comes as…

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  • Russia shamelessly claims BRITAIN 'staged' Putin's genocide in Bucha
  • Moscow will face 'maximum sanctions' following war crimes, warns Truss

Putin has also taken Dugin's message of reducing Ukraine to a rump state to heart.

In 2013, a year before the first war with Ukraine, he declared that he would defend Eurasia against "extreme Western-style liberalism".

Last July, he announced that "Russians and Ukrainians are one people".

While on the eve of his invasion in February, he went even further, describing Ukraine as a "colony with a puppet regime".

It comes as one of Putin's top allies claims he wants to build a Russian empire stretching "from Vladivostok to Lisbon".

Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and deputy chairman of the country's Security Council, wrote a rambling post on the social media app Telegram on Tuesday, in which he looked to justify the invasion of Ukraine.

In the long-winded letter, he finished with a chilling warning: "Russian President Vladimir Putin firmly set the goal of demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.

"These complex tasks do not happen all at once. And they will be decided not only on the battlefields.

"To change the bloody and full of false myths consciousness of a part of today's Ukrainians is the most important goal.

"The goal is for the sake of the peace of future generations of Ukrainians themselves and the opportunity to finally build an open Eurasia – from Lisbon to Vladivostok."

Speaking to The Sun Online, Andreas Umland, an analyst at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies, said: "This view of Ukraine and the West is not exclusive to Dugin.

"He has been expressing them in the most vivid and forceful ways but, when you read Putin on Ukraine, this is the Soviet or Tsarist interpretation of Ukrainian history."

Umland added: "These are old ideas of Russian anti-Westernism and Russian Ukraineophobia."

He said that Dugin is "serious" when he talks about a Eurasian empire stretching the length of Europe and Asia.

"This is a large geopolitical theory that argues there is this contradiction between sea powers and land powers," he explained.

"Russia is the centre of this and should unite all of the land powers around itself.

"Dugin has the idea that the entire Eurasian continent is one big super-empire including Germany and France."





The theories of a world dominated by Russia have been taken on by other more mainstream Russian figures, as Dugin has become a more marginal figure in recent years.

Director of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University Marlene Laruelle told The Sun Online: "Dugin contributed to making the notion of Eurasia popular in Russia in the 2000s."

However, other figures have also promoted this, such as Putin's adviser Sergey Glazyev, who called for a Eurasian Union.

Laruelle calls Dugin someone who frames Russia's revival as a Eurasian power in the sense of "national regeneration through violence and war".

It comes as Western officials including Nato chief Jens Stoltenberg warned that they expect a fresh Russian assault in the next few weeks to try and claim the eastern Ukrainian Donbas region.

As Russian troops have withdrawn from the area around Kyiv, fresh reports have emerged of alleged war crimes carried out by Putin's soldiers.

Heartless Russian death squads are accused of slaughtering civilians in a savage attack on the town of Borodyanka.

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It follows the grisly discovery of hundreds of bodies in mass graves around Bucha, another town outside of Kyiv.

Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russian troops of "genocide" against his people.

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