Ghassan Charbel wrote in Asharq Al-Awsat:
The Russian thinker, Alexander Dugin, has the right to mourn the murder of his daughter. The killing of children is the most terrible punishment that can be inflicted on parents. Killing children is a wound that the most famous doctors in history, and its name, time, cannot cool. This killing tastes the assassination of the future. And double the bitterness that the son was killed on behalf of his father. Because of his ideas and policies. The father’s feeling that he was the real target, and that luck saved him from death; But he was unable to save him from the torments.
It is clear that the killer wanted to use Dugin’s blood to send a painful message to the father of the new Russia coming from the womb of the Russian war in Ukraine. The message is very dangerous. It’s a painful blow below the belt. We can imagine the extent of the anger that swept Vladimir Putin’s face when he was informed of the crime, and that it took place in the Moscow region in particular. The mere fact that the assassination occurred means that a party decided to cross all the red lines, and to transfer the confrontation to an even more terrible stage.
The incident raised a series of difficult questions. Who is the party behind it? Did a party from the internal opposition decide to launch a life-and-death tour in the face of the man holding the decision and with all the threads? Did an external intelligence service play a role in inflicting a blow on the aura of the country’s master? Which apparatus would dare to transfer the confrontation to this level with the leader who came from the ranks of the KGB? Who is able to withstand a response the size of this slap or more? And who are the parties capable of penetrating the strict security umbrella that is set up around the vast countries, especially around its capital and the surrounding areas? And who guarantees that whoever planned to target Dugin will not plan to target a high-ranking official in the country? Of course, conspiracy theorists will not miss the topic. They will imply that the accident, despite its seriousness, may be a “homemade” device that wants to make the Russians aware that their country is in real danger, and that they must rally around the authorities who sent the army to Ukraine to thwart a plot and keep out the dangers.
But if Moscow accused Kyiv of being behind the incident, this means that severe punishment is coming, and that President Volodymyr Zelensky should feel his days; Especially after it was reported that the Ukrainian security services had so far thwarted more than one plan to remove it from the equation.
Targeting a dangerous business; Because of the ringing of the man’s name in his country. I will not join the so-called “Putin mind”; But what is certain is that the man left his mark on public opinion in his country, and perhaps on the president’s policy itself. Especially in terms of hostility to the West and its liberalism, and what it considers to be the deterioration of values in it, and in terms of the Eurasian destiny of Russia, and its failure to recognize maps; Especially those born from the collapse of the Soviet Union.
More dangerous than the assassination is a growing feeling that the fate of the world depends on what goes on in one man’s head. The repeated talk about the conditions for resorting to nuclear weapons, and the declaration of victory in the tone of the production of new generations of unprecedented missiles, constitute a convincing reason for spreading concern.
One man injured many. Putin sustained the first wound when he was asked to destroy his documents and leave East Germany; Because the Berlin Wall is collapsing. It was not simple. What collapsed were the borders of the empire and the dam that protected it from the attractiveness of the Western model that competes in its hatred of Dugin and Putin.
The second wound came when the Soviet Union committed suicide, and Putin saw firsthand the republics racing to jump off the Soviet train, washing their hands of its history. The officer, who returned to the intelligence headquarters in Moscow, had no choice but to put these escapes under the banner of treason. The third wound came when Yeltsin’s Russia seemed poor, hesitant and fragile, and the US ambassador in it deserved the title of “strong man” in a weak country.
Wounds rolled in Putin’s soul. He felt bitter whenever a “traitorous country” joined the “NATO” alliance, which was approaching the borders of “holy Russia”. Also entering the wound door are the scenes of Soviet tanks burning in Iraq and Libya with American or Atlantic fire, and seeing the former allies of Moscow behaving like orphans at the table of Western victory.
Wounds accumulated in the soul of the Soviet warrior. Many in the military and security establishment, in the church and in university circles feared for Russia itself.
Dugin was among those who panicked, looking forward to the great vengeance. The war in Ukraine was an opportunity for them to celebrate the massive coup. Dugin hastened to call for the annexation of all of Ukraine; Especially after Putin joined the advocates of being an invented or improvised state. But the Ukraine war has been prolonged, and there are those who believe that it is causing more wounds to Putin and the Dugins.
The aura of the Russian army, whose soul and capabilities Putin restored, led many to believe that the war would be a blitzkrieg. There are those who speak in this context of a terrible intelligence failure. It is said that Russian services expected the Ukrainian regime to collapse quickly. And that Zelensky bows and hides. For Kyiv to fall into the hands of the Russian army, or to quickly pass into the custody of a man loyal to Moscow, who guarantees its submission and buys its safety.
Six months after its outbreak, the war seems costly and protracted. The recent strikes that reconnected Crimea to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict certainly added a new wound, preceded by the sinking of the Russian battleship “Moskva”. The resistance operations in the areas controlled by the Russian army give the confrontation another dimension. Western weapons doubled the resilience of the Ukrainian army, and helped it target places that were far from its line. Another wound caused by Western experts’ words is that the Russian army, which is incapable of crushing the Ukrainian army, cannot engage in a direct confrontation with NATO. With the wound, it was said that Putin, who is fleeing from American hegemony, has made his country dependent on the Chinese giant.
Is Putin betting on the harsh European winter to force the world to accept a settlement that would allow him to talk about victory? Will he cling to completing the great coup today, or will he accept a decent exit? Putin’s sense of victory is dangerous. His sense of defeat would be even more dangerous. The fate of the world was tied to what went on in the head of one man. The world must pay the price for Dugin’s blood and Putin’s wounds.