“Russia is obliged to do something horrible to restore her credibility. It is very sad that we have to use such kind of arguments. But we have not choice. Only brutality, force, mass destruction and cruelty do matter in Trumplike world. Either you hit first or you are dead,” reads a tweet posted earlier this year by Kremlin ideologue Aleksandr Dugin.
It was a direct response to Trump’s de facto state terrorism in Venezuela, the blows dealt to Russian geostrategic interests in the region, and, finally, the direct confrontation between the US and Russia in the international waters of the Atlantic—a contest the US is currently winning handily with the seizure of Russian-flagged tankers. Leaving aside his comment on “Trump’s world”—which is hardly original, given that practically everyone willing to see rather than merely look has realized this by now (excluding, of course, the blinded ideological followers and imitators prevalent on European soil, Slovenia included)—the more pressing question is: what did Dugin mean by the first sentence? That “Russia is obliged to do something horrible”? And what could this “horrible” thing be? Although he does not state it explicitly, the instrument he is brandishing is abundantly clear: the nuclear threat.
I have written on these pages several times about Russia’s so-called red lines and its saber-rattling regarding the use of nuclear weapons on the Ukrainian battlefield as a deterrent maneuver in its hybrid war with the West. I have discussed this in the context of the “rollercoaster of fear” that the Kremlin has employed—with mixed success—over the last three or four years, aiming to end Western aid to Ukraine and force a Ukrainian surrender. As we know: unsuccessfully. The nuclear threats that rang out particularly loudly from Russian leaders in the summer of 2023 subsided for a time, as China—Putin’s far most important global backer—said a firm “no” to such brinkmanship. But now, in the era of Trump 2.0, this appears to be changing again, perhaps fatally. The brief lull is turning into a completely irresponsible game of nuclear chicken between superpowers, played as if with water pistols rather than weapons capable of annihilating humanity.
What has changed? Paradoxically, the shift in rhetoric so vividly personified by Dugin’s statement was not influenced so much by the situation in the Ukraine war or the fact that things are not going according to plan for Russia, nor by the cooling euphoria following the September Trump-Putin summit in Alaska. No, the key shift occurred with Trump’s militarism and unilateral military intervention in Venezuela, and what we witnessed in the days that followed: ultimatums to several Latin American countries, threats to annex Greenland, and a pervasive discourse of “We are the USA, who’s going to stop us? If we decide so, [insert target] will be ours too.” No arguments, no limits, and no regard for alliances, international order, international law, or any other “unnecessary” civilizational clutter.
Kremlin ideologues understand this all too well; judging by the reactions, I would venture to say far better than those in Brussels or practically any other European capital. For if the world order is indeed as we have seen in Venezuela and recent weeks, then we must ask ourselves again: who is even sovereign in this new order? Which states are de facto sovereign, and which are merely de iure—or in other words, sovereign only on paper, which, as we know, can endure anything.
We have, of course, long since abandoned the illusion that all sovereign states are sovereign in the same way, in the spirit of the UN Charter; international political reality sadly shows us otherwise. If it did not, we would not see illicit unilateral military interventions, invasions, and crimes, all of which remain unpunished (in the 21st century, from the US invasion of Iraq onwards). The reality is that the big and/or strong (just look at Israel) can afford significantly more than the small and/or weak. Therefore, for survival, the latter must make compromises, heed the interests of great (regional or global) powers, and ultimately unite, which makes them stronger together. Furthermore, an unwritten rule has long held that nuclear powers are more sovereign than others, as they possess the means (nuclear weapons) to effectively implement deterrence policies and maintain a balance of power in a regional context (the case of India and Pakistan). It is also because of this belief that new countries constantly seek to acquire nuclear weapons, as it is clear to everyone that this would place them in the group of states that are more sovereign than others.
For a long time, this belief prevailed in Russia as well, acting (and partly still acting) as a deterrent against any consideration by Ukraine’s European allies of directly entering Ukrainian soil in the hot phase of the war. This Russian card is so strong that it has paralyzed European decision-making for some time, effectively making Europe weaker in the long run by pushing it into the role of a passive player on a foreign field, playing by rules dictated by Russia. The red lines Russia has drawn have been crossed more than ten times in the last four years, but just enough not to pose a serious (existential) security risk to Russia. Unpleasant—yes; decisive—no. And the nuclear threat has played a crucial role in this throughout.
But what is now coming from the Kremlin are no longer nuclear threats intended for deterrence—in the current context, primarily against the US or Trump. It is a question of true sovereignty in the new world (dis)order, which reads as follows: truly sovereign states are not those that possess nuclear weapons (with other actors acting accordingly). Truly sovereign states are those that are determined to use nuclear weapons (preemptively) or have done so in the past. Like the USA at the end of World War II. And this is precisely what Russian state propagandists and Kremlin ideologues are speaking about increasingly loudly, starting with the aforementioned Dugin or, say, Sergei Karaganov, Chairman of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy. They build their argumentation on the premise that the US established its order precisely through the use of (nuclear) force and that Russia, to preserve its existence and civilizational sovereignty (the concept of the so-called Russian World), must climb the escalation ladder. In the world as they understand it, the (Russian) non-use of nuclear weapons at a key moment is a sign of weakness and a loss of sovereignty.
And if the “key moment” did not come in the form of the determined and courageous Ukrainian resistance, the result of which is the continued existence of an independent and sovereign Ukraine, it may have arrived now, when Trump is attempting to impose a world order in which the US not only has an exclusive right to its own sphere of interest in Central and South America but can also economically or militarily impose its will on anyone—even nuclear powers. Examples are countless, not least Greenland, which could spell the end of NATO. And if Russia wants to show Trump, first and foremost, that it deserves (at the very least) an equal relationship befitting global nuclear superpowers, and that at least Eastern (if not all of) Europe is its backyard where it can dictate terms again as it did decades ago during the Cold War, it must prove this with actions. It must, therefore, do “something terrible.”
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To what extent is this line of thinking merely the product of the delusions of Kremlin ideologues and propaganda trolls, who are convenient opportunists of Putin’s dictatorship, and to what extent is there genuine reflection behind it—and, above all, the possibility of these thoughts being realized? I often read that Dugin & Co. are Putin’s main ideologues, in the sense that they are people who help Putin (co)shape his image of the (Western) world, Russia’s role, and the so-called Russian civilization. But I believe this is mistaken. These are not advisor-ideologues who influence anything; they are the alter egos of Putin himself, who “merely” read early enough and well enough what their boss is thinking. Thus, we got Medvedev, who threatens Europe and European leaders on the X network, despising them and spreading lies; who writes and says what Putin himself thinks but does not want or wish to say (except when he indulges himself—as recently, when he called the British Prime Minister a “little pig”). Or the “negotiator” Medinsky, who, as a plagiarist historian, reinvents historical facts to justify Kremlin imperialist ideology time and again. And finally, Dugin and Karaganov, who in recent years have traversed the path from nuclear deterrence to justifying a preemptive nuclear strike. To the point that Russia must “do something terrible.” Is the thinking of the alter egos also the thinking of the bearer of the primary identity, Putin himself? I hope we never have to find out.
Published on 17 January 2026.