President Putin receives first wishes on 72nd birthday from Alexander Dugin
President Putin: One of the first birthday greetings sent in public to President Vladimir Putin, who turns 72 on Monday (October 7) and has been Russia’s most important leader for over 25 years, was “God save the Tsar!” Shortly after midnight, ultra-nationalist Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin sent a welcome on his Telegram chat channel.
Dugin, 62, has long supported the inclusion of Ukraine, the scene of Russia’s ongoing conflict, in a massive new Russian empire that would unite all Russian-speaking and other areas. In 2022, Dugin’s daughter perished in what seemed to be a vehicle bomb.
In a March election, Putin, who gave the order for his soldiers to invade Ukraine in 2022, achieved a historic post-Soviet landslide victory. If he served out his full six-year term, he would have been Russia’s longest-serving head of state during the more than 200-year period when tsars and empresses controlled the nation.
Putin said that the triumph solidified his already firm hold on power and demonstrated that Moscow was justified in defying the West and sending soldiers into Ukraine.
Putin is seen by the West as a murderer and an authoritarian. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, deemed the March vote that prolonged the former KGB spy’s tenure to be invalid.
Putin views Russia’s humiliation during the Cold War as the result of the West’s encroachment on its sphere of influence, and he frames the conflict in Ukraine as a continuation of this centuries-old struggle.
The conflict is referred to as an imperialist territorial grab by Kiev and its Western supporters. Thousands of people have died in the fighting; the great majority of them were Ukrainians. Millions have been uprooted and cities have been reduced to ruins.
The head of Russia’s Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, who refers to himself as Putin’s “foot soldier,” stated in a congratulations message on Telegram at midnight on Monday, “Today, friends, is the birthday of our national leader.”
“This is a significant day for our entire Fatherland.”
