Putin’s Regime: A Systemic Threat?

On April 8, Galia Ackerman was invited by the Union of Honorary Consuls in France (UCHF) to give a Zoom lecture, to which numerous Consuls General serving in France were also invited. The historian addressed the topic stated in the headline of this publication. On this occasion, she outlined the ideology of each of the four countries of the “Axis of Evil”—namely China, North Korea, Iran, and Russia—devoting significant attention to the latter two.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Honorary Consuls, Consuls General, 

The second quarter of the 21^st Century brings no respite to humanity. Numerous wars are shaking the world, two of which are of crucial importance to Europe: the war waged by Russia in Ukraine, now in its fifth year and with no end in sight, and the war in the Near and Middle East, which is ravaging the region and threatening global economic and political stability.

Before discussing Russia and the threat it poses to Europe and the future of democracy, let us pause for a moment to consider what some political scientists call the Axis of Evil—namely, a sort of sacred alliance uniting four totalitarian regimes: that of Putin, that of the mullahs, that of Kim Jong-un, and, of course, that of Comrade Xi Jinping. This alliance is achieved through various treaties, conventions, and other agreements that allow them to strengthen one another and come to each other’s aid, openly or secretly.

However, there are notable differences among these regimes. China has a long-term doctrine of economic expansion, which is realized not only through the flow of Chinese goods flooding the entire world, but also through participation in the construction of vital infrastructure in various countries around the globe or the purchase of existing infrastructure. However, it no longer seeks to export Marxism or a global revolution, and, apart from Taiwan, whose future remains uncertain, it has no other stated territorial claims.

North Korea, armed with nuclear weapons, remains a country armed to the teeth, seeking to break out of international isolation by aiding “brotherly” regimes, particularly Putin’s. The friendship between the two dictators is now sealed by the blood of young North Koreans sent to the slaughter in Ukraine and by arms shipments for that war: 15 million 152-mm and 122-mm artillery shells, anti-tank missiles, short-range ballistic missiles, and anti-tank missile systems, as well as artillery pieces and multiple-launch rocket systems. However, this country does not have any designs on neighboring territories either. The goal of North Korean leaders is to keep their own population under absolute control and cut off from the outside world.

Unlike China and North Korea, the Iranian and Russian regimes are messianic and eschatological in nature. The Iranian Revolution is waging war against the “Zionist entity” it has vowed to destroy. More broadly, the Islamist revolution aims to hasten the coming of the Hidden Imam, the Mahdi, by subjugating the countries of the Middle East, notably through proxy armies—Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis. Here is what the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari, declared to the entire world in January 2016: “We must be prepared to sacrifice ourselves to achieve the noble goals of the Islamic Revolution (Iranian Revolution). And by using the capabilities God has given us, in the spirit of jihad, we must play our own role in the Islamic Revolution. The emergence of the Islamic State and other Takfiri groups [Islamist extremists adhering to a violent ideology] in the region in recent years, along with the events that have unfolded, are paving the way for the advent of the Mahdi. Look at the positive outcome: approximately 200,000 armed young people stand ready in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen.” Since then, Iran’s strike force has continued to grow, thanks in particular to very strong ties between Iran and Russia.

Russia and Iran have strengthened their military ties since Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the launch of a large-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

In particular, Iran has supplied Russia with “Shahed” long-range attack drones, which Russia has used to bomb Ukraine, and of which it has also developed its own, more advanced versions. Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezechkian subsequently signed a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement, Article 4 of which stipulates that “with the aim of strengthening national security and countering common threats, the intelligence and security services of the contracting parties shall exchange information and expertise.”

Indeed, Russia appears to be assisting Iran in cyberspace. Since late February, Iranian-controlled hacker groups have intensified their operations, primarily targeting critical infrastructure and telecommunications companies in the Persian Gulf, in cooperation with Russian hacker groups. Iranian hacker groups have also employed methods they obtained from Russian hackers.

The support of so-called Russian patriots for Iran in its fight against the United States and Israel speaks volumes about their similar messianic and apocalyptic goals. Here is what one of the leading Russian ideologues, Alexander Dugin, stated a month ago: “

I would like to emphasize that we can already say that we are no longer dealing with a mere liberal West. Liberalism quickly ran out of steam and disappeared from the agenda. No one talks about liberal values or democracy anymore—all of that is now a thing of the past. What reigns now is the cult of Baal, the cult of the golden calf, the cult of global power, the cult of the United States and Israel. It is a civilization of violence, Satanism, cannibalism, perversions, and pedophilia. And this “pedophile civilization of Baal” is dropping its mask right before our eyes and beginning to attack in earnest. 

What is happening bears a strong resemblance to the End Times in every respect. And if we cannot find the strength within ourselves to realize the gravity of the situation, we will find ourselves in a catastrophic situation. Many claim: ‘This is not the time to panic,’ but sometimes it is better to be seriously concerned about what is happening than to believe we will get through it. Now, it is certain that we will not get through it: Iran is the last obstacle on the path to open war between the civilization of Baal and Russia. 

If we had the necessary will and determination (though I strongly doubt it), we would have to start acting according to the same rules that everyone else, except us, is already applying. In other words, we would eliminate Ukraine’s political-military leadership and, regardless of the cost, carry out the objectives of the special military operation¹.”

In an interview at the Izborsk Club, Dugin stands by his words: “Netanyahu stated that this war, from a religious and Zionist perspective, is being waged, in his view, against Amalek [Israel’s sworn enemy in the Bible]. Amalek is Israel’s enemy, and Netanyahu clearly stated in his speech that they would exterminate infants and children, and that no one should be left alive in this war. Such is Netanyahu’s mindset: the war must end when Iran no longer exists, when Amalek has been annihilated. This is Israel’s political-religious project. The first blow struck against Israel’s enemies, Amalek and Iran, proved to be very painful. 

And to intimidate the population, they cynically exterminated children in a targeted strike. However, this did not produce the effect these American-Israeli monsters had hoped for. The Iranian people rallied around their leaders: a new Rahbar was elected, the new head of the political-religious structure Vilayat al-Faqih. The Iranian people and their leaders are now determined to end this war only after wiping Israel off the face of the earth. 

The axe has now met the stone: from Israel’s perspective, it is Amalek who must be annihilated. From the Iranians’ perspective, Israel—just like the entire West, with the United States at its head—is the Dajjal, that is, a sort of Antichrist who is destined to become the king ruling over the entire earth. 

At present, much depends on Iran. Iran has no intention of ending this war; it intends to achieve its objectives—to destroy Israel as such—and it has every reason to do so after what Israel has inflicted on its military, religious, and political leaders.”

Finally, the conclusion of the same interview: “The United States demands that we stop providing intelligence to Iran. This therefore implies that we are providing it to them. Yet, over the past four years, they have provided and continue to provide intelligence to our enemy in Ukraine: these wars are too closely intertwined. Moreover, these are two fronts of the same battle: a common enemy, common values. Iran and we are fighting for a multipolar world, while the West and Israel are fighting to preserve a dying, decaying unipolar world. Objectively, we are on Iran’s side.”

Traditional anti-Semitism among the Russian population takes on terrifying dimensions when voiced by another sinister figure, the writer Alexander Prokhanov. I quote: “All those places in Iran that are dear to me are being struck by Israeli and American missiles. The depraved and cannibalistic residents of Epstein’s island have boarded aircraft carriers, taken the controls of bombers, and are violating Iran. The pedophile Trump killed two hundred little Iranian girls in a single blow and covered his putrid body with the corpses of children. The executioner Netanyahu, who makes the Jews the most bloodthirsty people in the world, is building the Third Temple by assembling it with the bones of Palestinians, pouring the blood of infants into concrete mixers. 

We are living through the days of the greatest crimes in history. Netanyahu and Trump are the bloody misfits of global civilization. May the pointed minarets of Iran’s countless mosques turn into hypersonic missiles and topple the bloody seven-branched menorah. 

Iranian lion, take your great leap!”

After discussing the very close link between the ideologies and eschatological visions present in both the Iranian and Russian regimes, let us speak more specifically about Russia. Russia’s imperialist ambition is beyond doubt. Jokingly, Vladimir Putin stated a few years ago that Russia’s borders end nowhere. Indeed, by advocating for the advent of a multipolar world—which is already a reality—Russia seeks to resurrect the “Soviet empire” within its former borders, to bring Central Europe, or even Europe as a whole, under its control.

It would be a world of civilizational states, as Dugin puts it: “The multipolar world is, in a sense, a world of worlds, a mega-cosmos encompassing entire galaxies. And here, it is important to determine how many such civilizational states can exist, even if only in theory.” For Dugin, there are only three: China, India, and Russia-Eurasia. He acknowledges the existence of an Islamic civilization, but the peoples of Islam are far from forming a state structure. Also, for Dugin, “the struggle for Ukraine is nothing other than a struggle for the civilization-state.”

Let us not delve into the various interpretations of the concept of the “civilization-state” in Russia, regarding the West, the United States, Latin America, Africa, etc. What matters to us is the fact that the concept of the “civilizational state” as a definition of Russia is deeply rooted in the public consciousness. Yet this civilization includes, according to Putin himself and his ideologues, any territory where Russians live and where they might be “persecuted” because of their ethnicity or language—this is the pretext for this war against Ukraine, perhaps soon against the Baltic states, and perhaps other countries as well, since the Russian diaspora numbers several million people scattered across the globe. This civilization also aims to reunite historically Russian lands—in a somewhat simplistic sense, all lands where a Russian soldier’s boot has left its mark.

It was Vladimir Putin who began speaking, as early as 2012, of “Historical Russia” in his article headlined “Russia and the National Question.” In it, he asserted that Russia’s main problems “are linked to the collapse of the USSR and, in essence, from a historical perspective, of Greater Russia, whose foundations date back to the 18^th Century.”

Thus, according to Vladimir Putin and his supporters, “Historical Russia” took shape precisely in the 18^th Century. Isn’t this a mistake? Why, if we are talking about history, not in the 10^th Century, when Ancient Rus’ was formed, with Kyiv as its capital?

The answer to these questions is obvious: because it was in the 18^th Century that the Russian Empire was born. More precisely in 1721, after the victory over Sweden and the conclusion of the Treaty of Nystad, the 300^th anniversary of which was celebrated in 2021 in Russian ruling circles as a landmark event for “the emergence of the Russian state.” And this perspective is truly significant both for Russia itself and for its neighbors, because it was precisely in the 18^th Century that the borders of “Historical Russia” began to take shape, distinct from the internationally recognized borders of the Russian Federation.

The former did not merely cover the territory of the former Soviet Union but extended beyond it, encompassing Alaska, Finland, and Poland. This, apparently, has given quite conventional Russian politicians and propagandists reasons to speak very seriously about the prospects of the “return” of the former, the imposition of non-aligned status on the latter, and the withdrawal of NATO troops from the third. It is these ideas—which disregard reality and international law—that explain Russia’s ultimatums to NATO and the United States, demanding their total withdrawal from Central Europe, and the return of the former Soviet bloc countries to neutrality—a prerequisite for bringing them back under Russian control.

However, this is not merely an imperialist project, far from it. In 2023, President Putin enshrined the concept of Russia as a civilization-state in the “Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation.” According to this concept, Russia is a full-fledged civilization-state, a vast Eurasian and Euro-Pacific power that has united the Russian people and the other peoples constituting the community of the “Russian world.” The concept has a vast spiritual component. As the influential Bishop Joseph explained at a recent academic conference in Moscow, “it is on the basis of Orthodox spirituality that a unique phenomenon emerged, dubbed ‘the Russian world’ . It is a global civilizational project of the Russian people, which has brought together many other peoples around it on the basis of the Russian spiritual tradition, the Russian state, the Russian language, Russian culture, and a shared history. The idea of the Russian World emerged after the baptism of Rus’, and it was in the mid-11^th Century that the concept of the ‘Russian World’ was first mentioned to characterize Russian Orthodox civilization.”

And the primary mission of Russian Orthodox civilization is to oppose Evil, and particularly the satanic West. Bishop Joseph explains: “Russia’s historical mission in world history has often been interpreted through the concept of katechon (the ‘holding back’ force)—a force that prevents the global spread of evil, which is to culminate in the coming of the son of perdition, the Antichrist. This concept reflects the idea of Russia as the guardian of traditional spiritual values at a time when these values are being destroyed.”

This idea is clearly expressed in the Declaration of the World Russian People’s Council adopted in 2024: “The supreme meaning of the existence of Russia and the Russian world it has created—their spiritual mission—is to be the universal ‘Brake,’ protecting the world from evil. Its historical mission is to thwart, time and again, attempts to establish universal hegemony in the world—attempts to subject humanity to a single evil principle.”

Under Putin’s regime, an upside-down worldview has taken over the media and official statements: We are fighting the West and its evil proxy, Ukraine, in the name of resisting the coming of the Antichrist, in the name of the battle of Good against Evil. And saving the Russians (though the Putin regime and Putin himself view Ukrainians as stray Russians who must be brought back into the fold) is a civilizing mission of this regime, to establish the Empire of Good. In the name of this Good, atrocities are being committed in Ukraine, and previously in Syria, Africa, and Georgia; civilians are being killed, and their own cannon fodder is being sent to their deaths, destined straight for paradise. As the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Sergey Lavrov, stated: “We have our own concept of Good. And it is precisely this concept that prevails.” Previously, Mr. Lavrov had said that nearly all of Western Europe was “mobilized,” and that Europe wanted, through the use of bayonets, to prolong the existence of Volodymyr Zelensky’s Nazi regime.

And what if Good fails to prevail against the Antichrist, the world government, and Western perversion? Iran has already demonstrated that it is ready to fan the flames across the entire Middle East so that the whole region perishes in the fire. Putin’s Russia professes the same. In 2018, in a documentary film, Vladimir Putin explained: “If the decision is made to destroy Russia, then we have the legitimate right to retaliate. Yes, it will be a global catastrophe for humanity; it will be a global disaster for the world. But as a Russian citizen and head of the Russian state, I ask myself the following question: what good is such a world to us if there is no longer a Russia?”

The Russian president addressed the topic of nuclear war again during the plenary session of the Valdai Discussion Club in October 2018. There, he explained under what circumstances Russia would be prepared to use weapons of mass destruction against an aggressor. “We have a nuclear early warning system in case of a ballistic missile attack. When we are convinced that an attack has been launched against Russian territory, we retaliate. Of course, it would be a global catastrophe, but we cannot be the instigators. The aggressor must know that retaliation is inevitable. As for us, we will go to paradise as martyrs, while they will simply die, because they won’t even have time to repent.”

In 2018, Russian authorities viewed nuclear weapons “exclusively as a means of deterrence.” The word “exclusively” does not appear in the new nuclear doctrine dated November 2024. The new doctrine specifies that nuclear deterrence “also applies to states that make available the territory, airspace, and/or maritime space, as well as the resources under their control, to prepare and carry out an act of aggression against the Russian Federation.” The decree does not name any specific blocs or countries, but it is clear that it refers to NATO and Ukraine.

Iran is a theocracy, and Russia is only partially so, but eschatological and suicidal tendencies make the latter more dangerous than ever.

1. Françoise Thom was the first to point out this similarity between Shia and Russian eschatologies; see in particular the chapter “Dugin or Eschatological Syncretism” in her article “How Eschatology Wreaks Havoc in the United States and Russia,” Desk Russie, March 24, 2026.