In the wake of the much-anticipated Anchorage summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian philosopher and nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin ignited controversy with a social media post on X.

Dugin claimed that Putin had handed Trump “solid, considerable documents on Russian history proving that Ukraine is a fake.”

“Putin has supplied Trump with solid considerable documents on Russian history proving that Ukraine is a fake”-Russian most Influential Political Thinker Alexander Dugin, also known as “Putin’s brain”, Claims.

by Smriti Singh

The statement, made late on August 15, quickly went viral, garnering both support and ridicule, and spotlighting the Kremlin’s longstanding narrative that challenges Ukraine’s sovereignty.

Who is Alexander Dugin?

Alexander Dugin, often described as “Putin’s brain” or “Putin’s Rasputin,” is one of Russia’s most influential political philosophers, though his exact sway over the Kremlin remains debated. A champion of Eurasianist thought, Dugin envisions a multipolar world dominated not by Western liberalism, but by powerful civilizational blocs led by Russia, China, and allied states.

Dugin’s most famous work, Foundations of Geopolitics (1997), became influential within Russian military and strategic circles, advocating for Moscow to expand its influence across the post-Soviet space, weaken Western alliances, and reclaim what he calls Russia’s “historical lands.”

Ukraine, in his worldview, is not a legitimate state but an artificial construct—a narrative also advanced by Putin, most notably in his 2021 essay On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.

Dugin’s Claim in Context

The Anchorage summit between Trump and Putin was billed as a potential turning point in the Ukraine conflict. While no major breakthroughs were announced, both leaders signaled optimism. Trump described the talks as “productive” and focused on saving lives, while Putin emphasized the need for a “just balance of power in Europe” and referred to Ukrainians as a “brotherly nation.”

In the days leading up to the summit, Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation warned that Putin intended to present Trump with “historical materials,” including maps and documents framing Ukraine as an artificial entity.

Dugin’s claim that such documents were indeed presented gives weight to these warnings and reflects the Kremlin’s ongoing efforts to delegitimize Ukraine. By phrasing it as proof that “Ukraine is a fake,” Dugin used inflammatory rhetoric consistent with Russia’s information warfare strategy.

Historical Claims: Myths vs. Reality

Russian revisionist history often rests on three main arguments:

Kyivan Rus’ Heritage: Moscow claims direct descent from Kyivan Rus’, the medieval polity (9th–13th centuries) centered in Kyiv. However, historians note that Rus’ was based in modern-day Ukraine, and Muscovy—the precursor to Russia—emerged later under Mongol domination.

oviet-Era Borders: Putin and others argue that Lenin “invented” Ukraine by granting it autonomy and attaching regions like Donbas and Crimea in the 1920s [GUS: CRIMEA WAS GIFTED TO UKRAINE IN 1954 BY Khrushchev:

The ex-president of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk made a very unexpected statement. According to him, in 1954, the Crimea was literally imposed on the Ukrainian SSR by Khrushchev. Kravchuk seriously declares that the Crimea was a real “depressed” region, where people could not find either food or water, being bitten by mosquitoes ... Kravchuk's statement leads the portal Rosbalt:

When I first arrived in Crimea in 1953, I was horrified. Shops did not work there, there was no place to buy food, there was no drinking water. In the villages were swollen people. They were bitten by mosquitoes, and therefore they had swollen faces. I myself am from the village, and my family was not rich, but I had never seen such poverty as there.].

CONTINUING 

Yet Ukraine’s national consciousness long predates Soviet policies, with independence movements active in the 19th century.

Post-Soviet Independence: In 1991, over 90% of Ukrainians—including in Russian-speaking regions—voted for independence. Russia itself guaranteed these borders under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum in exchange for Ukraine surrendering its nuclear arsenal, only to violate that agreement with the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

(GUS: UKRAINE VIOLATED THE AGREEMENT WITH THE AMERICAN SPONSORED MAIDAN REVOLUTION WHICH LED TO THE PEOPLE OF CRIMEA AND OF THE DONBASS TO REFUSE TO SERVE UNDER THE NEWLY IMPOSED KIEV FASCIST REGIME...]

Independent scholars widely dismiss Russia’s arguments as pseudohistorical. As Ukraine’s disinformation watchdog noted, “No historical facts, let alone pseudohistorical fantasies, can be the basis for territorial claims.”

Reactions and Public Debate

Dugin’s post attracted more than 141,000 views within hours. Supporters hailed it as validation of Russia’s position, calling for “redrawing maps” and exposing alleged Ukrainian corruption. Critics, however, mocked the claim as absurd. One viral reply quipped, “Maybe I should give Trump solid, considerable documents on British history proving the USA is fake.”

The exchange highlights the broader battle over narratives. Russia seeks to frame the war as a historic correction, while Ukraine and its allies argue it is a blatant violation of sovereignty. Within the U.S., Dugin’s framing could resonate among segments of Trump’s base, especially as Trump himself has suggested exploring land swaps—a position closer to Russian demands than Kyiv’s insistence on full territorial integrity.

Implications for Diplomacy

If Putin truly presented Trump with such “documents,” the act goes beyond symbolism. It suggests Russia is trying to cement its worldview into negotiations, framing them not as a conflict between aggressor and victim but as a historical dispute over an “artificial” border. These risks entrench divisions further, as any U.S. acknowledgment of these materials could be read internationally as lending legitimacy to Russian claims.

At the same time, the incident underscores the difficulty of separating historical debate from modern geopolitics. For Russia, history is not merely academic—it is weaponized as a tool of statecraft. For Ukraine, defending its past is inseparable from defending its sovereignty.

Alexander Dugin’s claim about Putin’s “documents” is not about truth but about narrative power. By declaring Ukraine “fake,” Russia seeks to undermine the very foundation of Ukrainian nationhood, justify territorial aggression, and shape international perceptions.

Whether or not Trump takes these materials seriously, the fact that they were reportedly shared at all demonstrates how central disinformation and historical revisionism remain to Moscow’s strategy.

As negotiations continue, the challenge will be to separate propaganda from reality. A just peace cannot be built on fabricated histories. Dugin’s words, inflammatory as they may be, remind us that in today’s geopolitics, history is often the sharpest weapon of all.

https://tfiglobalnews.com/2025/08/16/putin-has-supplied-trump-with-solid-considerable-documents-on-russian-history-proving-that-ukraine-is-a-fake-russian-most-influential-political-thinker-alexander-dugin-also-known-as-puti/

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MEANWHILE:

A BOOK REVIEW FROM ANOTHER UKRAINIAN POINT OF VIEW 

BY Serhiy Bilenky
Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Toronto Office, University of Alberta

Vadym Adadurov. “Napoleonida” na skhodi Ievropy: Uiavlennia, proekty ta diial'nist' uriadu Frantsii shchodo pivdenno-zakhidnykh okrain Rosiis'koi imperii na pochatku XIX stolittia [Napoléonide in the East of Europe: Representations, Plans, and Activities of the French Government in Relation to the Southwestern Border Regions of the Russian Empire at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century]. 2nd, expanded and revised ed., Vydavnytstvo Ukrains'koho Katolyts'koho Universytetu, 2018. 624 pp. Tables. Footnotes. Appendix. Bibliography. Indexes. Summaries. ₴250.00, cloth.

Since the time that Élie Borschak (Il'ko Borshchak) published his famous study “Napoléon et l’Ukraine” (“Napoleon and Ukraine”; in 1922, with its expanded Ukrainian-language edition in 1937), many people have come to believe that Napoleon Bonaparte and his government were sympathetic toward Ukraine and even planned to carve out a few states (including one comprising Ukrainian Cossacks) under French protectorate from the territories of Russian-ruled Ukraine.

The works of other émigré historians, such as Oleksander Ohloblyn and Dmytro Doroshenko (Liudy Staroi Ukrainy [People of Old Ukraine] and Narys istorii Ukrainy: Vid polovyny XVII stolittia [Outline of the History of Ukraine: From the Middle of the Seventeenth Century], respectively), have similarly given rise to a related popularly held persuasion—that on the eve of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, a significant portion of Ukrainian nobles in Left-Bank Ukraine were looking forward to the arrival of the emperor of the French and were even prepared to actively support the invaders, which would have placed these descendants of Cossack officers among Napoleon’s most ardent sympathizers anywhere in Europe, on a par with the Poles. All of these beliefs have continued to inspire Ukrainian historical imagination and to boost the pro-European sentiments of Ukrainians.

Unfortunately for the individuals who have been adhering to these alleged historical facts, the book “Napoleonida” na skhodi Ievropy: Uiavlennia, proekty ta diial'nist' uriadu Frantsii shchodo pivdenno-zakhidnykh okrain Rosiis'koi imperii na pochatku XIX stolittia (published in Ukraine in 2018; its first edition appeared in 2007, with a small print run) inflicts a fatal blow to their beliefs. This study consistently argues that the French government was not serious about liberating Ukraine from Russian rule and that the local Ukrainian nobles, far from rushing to help the French armies, considered their glory-seeking commander to be inglorious at best and “‘the Devil born out of hell’” (my trans.; 198) at worst. This monograph was written by Vadym Adadurov, a historian teaching at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, and it is among the highest-calibre historical works coming out of Ukraine in recent years. The author’s knowledge of the literature in several languages (that is, French, Russian, English, German, and Polish) is immense, and his mastery of the archival research is even more extraordinary.

The book’s list of primary sources includes countless documents from a number of archives and libraries—mostly French, but also Austrian, Polish, and Ukrainian. The bulk of the primary documents are from the Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs (Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires étrangères). Among them are memoranda and policy proposals submitted to France’s foreign minister as well as direct correspondence between diplomats and Napoleon himself. The sources consulted by the author all refer to the territory of what is present-day Ukraine and its strategic importance in any fresh rounds of French-Russian hostilities; such hostilities seemed likely to resume soon after the Treaty of Tilsit’s settlement of the first military encounter between France and Russia in 1806–07.

Adadurov’s stated goal is to reconstruct how the French government imagined “the objects of its foreign-policy activities” (my trans.; 68), and he focuses primarily on the territory of Russian-ruled Ukraine in the period approximately between 1803 and 1812. By employing a set of interdisciplinary methodologies—ranging from traditional source criticism to the psychology of perception and imagining and historical anthropology— Adadurov accomplishes a monumental task consisting of three elements: first, the reconstruction of the image of Ukraine and its diverse population as perceived by the highest French officials, including Napoleon himself; second, the thorough study of the plans and policy proposals dealing with parts of what is present-day Ukraine as drafted by French diplomatic and intelligence officers and their (primarily Polish) allies; and third, the determination of Ukraine’s place in the activities of French intelligence agents and military figures in the wake of Napoleon’s invasion of imperial Russia in 1812. This is also how the book is structured: part 1 (63–246) deals with “[r]epresentations,” or “[i]maginings,” (uiavlennia); part 2 (247–379), with “[p]lans”; and part 3 (381–517), with “[a]ctivities” (my trans.; 63, 247, 381).

As it turns out, French government officials generally viewed Ukraine’s geography, history, and demography through the prism of Polish, German, and Russian sources (often official descriptions and scholarly statistics), with the rare addition of eyewitness reports compiled by French diplomats and spies residing or travelling in Russia. The territory of present-day Ukraine appeared split into different historical and geographical regions. Among them were Volhynia, Podilia, and “‘Polish Ukraine’” (on the right bank of the Dnipro River); “‘Russian Ukraine,’” or the former Cossack Hetmanate (on the river’s left bank); the northern Black Sea region; and the “‘Cossack land’” in the steppe north of the Sea of Azov (my trans.; 82). Characteristically, the French imagined the Right Bank essentially as a Polish territory populated 

by Polish nobles (France’s main allies in the region) and by peasants of uncertain ethnicity, who were seen not as Ukrainians but as “‘Russians’”speaking a dialect of Polish or a mixture of Polish and Russian. By contrast, the Left Bank was populated by “‘Cossacks’” (variants—“‘Little Russians,’” or even “‘Ukrainians’”), but it is unclear whether they were related to the “‘Russians’” of the Right Bank. These differences in classification were based on the French method of defining distinct nations, which was done exclusively via “the historical experience of state-building.” Accordingly, the Left Bank, as the territory of the former Cossack state, was populated by the “‘Cossack nation’” or its descendants—Little Russians, or Ukrainians—while the previously Polish territories on the right bank of the Dnipro contained only one real nation—the Poles (my trans.; 166–68). Regarding the Cossacks as a distinct social estate in parts of Left-Bank and southern Ukraine, the French government experts saw them as “natural allies” of France; however, the Ukrainian Cossacks, unlike the Polish nobles of the Right Bank, were ultimately deemed incapable of staging an uprising against Russia on their own. As a result, Napoleon and his officials ignored all of the proposals that enthusiastically suggested employing the Cossacks as a military force against Russia (227–28).

Most of these proposals were written by Poles. Adadurov mentions a half-dozen such authors—either émigrés in France or residents of the Duchy of Warsaw, a Polish puppet state created by Napoleon—who between 1806 and 1812 submitted to the French authorities around twenty memoranda and policy proposals containing various plans for the unmaking of Russia. All of these Poles called on Napoleon to restore Poland within its “historical borders”—that is, the ones that had existed prior to the partitions of 1793–95, when the boundary between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian Empire extended along the Dnipro River. One Polish author, in particular, stands out from all of the others owing to his geopolitical imagination and prolific output (in 1811 and early 1812, he wrote eleven of the twenty memoranda mentioned above).

Michał Sokolnicki (1760–1816) was a major general in the army of the Duchy of Warsaw, and later, an aide- de-camp of Napoleon during his 1812 campaign in Russia. In Sokolnicki’s memoranda commissioned by the French government, he argued for a breakup of imperial Russia along national lines and a further reorganization of eastern Europe under Napoleon.

In order to eliminate the Russian threat from the direction of “‘the gate of Europe,’” a number of peoples conquered by the “‘northern barbarians’” (Russians) would have to join Napoleon’s “‘Great Empire.’” These conquered peoples (among them—Latvians, Estonians, Ukrainian Cossacks, and Crimean Tatars) would then gratefully accept the freedom brought to them by Napoleon (my trans.; 27). In one 1812 memorandum, Sokolnicki set forth an especially bold geopolitical project, in 

which he was also the first to suggest the idea of Ukrainian independence in the form of an enigmatic duchy called “Napoléonide.”

Alas, the Napoléonide of Adadurov’s book title falls within the company of other stillborn or merely fictitious countries, such as Utopia, Herzoslovakia, and El Dorado—entities that were once imagined but never came to appear on political maps. Underlying the invention of some of these places were obviously satirical motives (we see this, for instance, in the case of Robert Musil’s Kakania [Kakanien] and, especially, Charlie Chaplin’s Bacteria, with its “great dictator” aptly named Benzino Napaloni). Napoléonide, by contrast, was not the product of a satirist but the idea of a political strategist, and as such, it is a fascinating piece of geopolitical thought. This project envisioned the creation of a set of “‘federated duchies’” on the territory between a restored Poland and Muscovy, effectively forming a belt of military buffer states separating Europe’s “‘civilization’” from Asia’s “‘barbarism.’” Not surprisingly, these duchies would have to be placed under a Polish protectorate, but their governments were to be appointed by the French emperor. Among a half-dozen proposed duchies we see Chernihiv and Poltava. And there was the common state of former enemies the Ukrainian Cossacks and the Crimean Tatars—that is, “‘Napoléonide,’” which was to include the historical Crimea and parts of Ukraine’s Left Bank between the city of Katerynoslav and the Sea of Azov. It was expected that once these communities were freed by Napoleon from “‘the Muscovite yoke,’” they would gradually become civilized and join the European family of nations (my trans.; 215, 303). As Adadurov remarks, the most striking feature of the Napoléonide project was not its obvious Orientalist stereotypes but the fact that “the sole voice of this Polish [political] leader reminded [Europeans] about the importance of the Ukrainian Cossack state for the interests of Europe” (my trans.; 304).

Ironically, as the historian determines, the fact that one of the first concepts of an independent Ukraine rolled off the pen of a Polish noble was reason enough for Borshchak (an amateur historian who was famous for his anti-Polish views) to ascribe authorship of the concept to a French official, thereby erasing its Polish origins (40).

In actuality, the French had nothing to do with the projected state slated to be named after Napoleon—it was entirely Sokolnicki’s idea, and it was not authorized by any high-ranking French official. It seems that the Pole’s audacious proposal fell on deaf ears. Adadurov convincingly shows that the French ultimately were not interested in creating a separate Ukrainian state—be it the Duchy of Chernihiv or Napoléonide, a utopian state comprising Cossacks and Tatars. And thus, Napoléonide had no real chance to materialize on the maps. Furthermore, contrary to the fervent desires of Napoleon’s Polish allies, the emperor of the French was reluctant to restore Poland within its pre-Partition borders, 

toying instead with the notion of setting up a few “duchies” (my trans.; 337n117), or kingdoms, in Right-Bank Ukraine and restoring historical Lithuania as dependent on Paris and not reunited with other Polish lands under Warsaw (337–40). The emperor was even prepared to hand Volhynia over to the Habsburgs in exchange for Austrian help with the Russian campaign or, potentially, to simply leave the province within Russia as a concession to Czar Alexander I. The only consistent principle underlying Napoleon’s foreign policy was, as the old adage states, divide et impera. We also learn that even in retreat, Napoleon did not really plan to go to, or through, Ukraine. One of the reasons for this was the complete failure on the part of French intelligence to set up a network of reliable agents in the region (464) and to incite an anti-Russian insurgency anywhere in Ukraine.

While Adadurov’s book is impeccably researched and well written, there are a few small criticisms that can be made about the author’s approach. The psychological theory that Adadurov chooses for his discussion of French representations of Ukraine and imperial Russia is at times too elaborate for conveying the fairly obvious idea that much of what we see, or choose to notice, especially while travelling abroad or imagining a foreign country, is only a distorted version of reality and not reality per se.

In spite of the exaggeration of this theory, the author’s observations about a “misrepresentation” of reality allow him to advance a wider argument that is crucial for the book. The French took much of what they “saw” (rather— chose to see) as the whole truth. In actuality, they consistently underestimated the strength of the Russian forces and overestimated both the popular discontent against Russian autocracy and the readiness of Polish nobles on the right bank of the Dnipro and Ukrainian peasants and “Cossacks” across Ukraine to rebel against Russian “tyranny.” By clinging to these distorted views, the French, including Napoleon himself, merely revealed their deep-seated condescending attitudes—as “‘civilized’” Europeans toward “barbaric” Russia (322; my trans.; 526).

Such gross miscalculations, the author seems to contend, ultimately led to the dramatic defeat of Napoleon in 1812—which occurred not only owing to meteorological resistance from the Russian Winter (famously known as General Frost) but also at the hands of very real soldiers, local partisans, and militiamen who clearly did not appreciate the kind of liberation from tyranny that the French claimed to have brought them.

One could also potentially criticize the book for its inclusion of numerous names that are of little consequence in Eastern European history, regardless of how significant these figures might be in the eyes of French diplomatic or military historians. Most readers will have difficulty differentiating the most important personalities in the story from the marginal ones. Furthermore, there are far too many quotations, which add little to the author’s argument in specific sections. It is commendable that quotations in the French original are appended to translated passages, but it is hardly necessary in most instances, where translations on their own would certainly suffice. Original versions should accompany only the most noteworthy and debatable passages, phrases, and words.

Adadurov’s monograph abounds with a wealth of empirical data, and it relies on strong theoretical underpinnings. Fundamentally, it is a remarkable achievement of Ukrainian historiography. The writing style is engaging as the author winds through and uncovers complex diplomatic and military topics and issues while at the same time ensuring that the subject matter is accessible to a broad audience. This book should be read by historians of the Napoleonic wars as well as by scholars interested in imperial Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian histories.

East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies (ewjus.com) ISSN 2292-7956 Volume IX, No. 1 (2022)

THE ARTICLE ABOVE IS COMING FROM A UKRAINIAN SOURCE AND MAY NOT BE ENTIRELY ACCURATE IN WHAT HAPPENED IN THE MIND OF THE UKRAINIANS AND OF NAPOLEON... PRESENTLY WE NEED TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE KNOWLEDGE THAT AT LEAST 35 PER CENT OF UKRAINE WAS POPULATED BY RUSSIANS, MOSTLY IN THE EAST — RUSSIANS WHO, IN 2014, REJECTED THE NAZI REGIME IN KIEV [WHICH WAS REALIGNING WITH ITS PAST CONNECTION WITH HITLER VIA BANDERA AND HIS ILK (WHO MURDERED 600,000 JEWS, POLES AND MANY RUSSIAN CIVILIANS)]. THE NAZI KIEV REGIME INFLATED BY RUTHELESS DECREES BY ZELENSKAKA BECAME HELL-BENT ON DESTROYING RUSSIAN HERITAGE IN UKRAINE.

WHETHER PUTIN IS CORRECT OR NOT (HE IS), HE IS WINNING ON THE BATTLEFIELD AND NATO CAN DO ZIP ABOUT IT.

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

THESE WILL ALSO INCLUDE ODESSA, KHERSON AND KHARKIV.....

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

TRANSNISTRIA WILL BE PART OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION.

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

EASY. 

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 *NAPOLEON'S FACE RESTORED BY GUS LEONISKY....