Sergei Naryshkin

Russia's President Vladimir Putin, second from left, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, left, Director of Russian Federal Security Service Alexander Bortnikov, second from right, and Director of Foreign Intelligence Service Sergei Naryshkin hold a meeting at the Kremlin in Moscow, Dec. 19, 2016.

Sergei Naryshkin is a longtime supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was tapped in September, 2016 by Vladimir Putin to lead the SVR.,,

Aleksandr Dugin is a former adviser to Sergei Naryshkin.

Red Terror Architect Statue Unveiled

Felix Dzerzhinsky Statue Unveiled on September 11, 2023 in Moscow

"The return of the past in Putin’s Russia resembles a mass-scale historical reenactment."

A bronze statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police (Cheka) and architect of the Red Terror, was unveiled on September 11, 2023, at the headquarters of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) in Yasenevo, a southern suburb of Moscow.

This statue is a smaller replica of the original 15-ton monument that stood on Lubyanka Square in Moscow, in front of the KGB headquarters, from 1958 until it was toppled by protesters in August 1991 after a failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev.

From Reuters:

"Sergei Naryshkin, the chief of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), successor to the KGB's famed First Chief Directorate, marked the unveiling of the statue outside its Yasenevo headquarters in southern Moscow...Dzerzhinsky towered above Naryshkin, Putin's 68-year-old spy master, who stood with a group of other men - many of them unknown."

'loudly supported Russian intervention in Ukraine'

Vladimir Putin's ally and spy chief Sergei Naryshkin has been a vocal supporter the invasion of Ukraine. Excerpt from March 23, 2014 article at The Guardian:

...That the decision-making was adhoc does not mean it did not tap into aspirations that have long been bottled up among sections of the Russian elite. Putin's Ukraine point-man, the economist Sergei Glazyev, told the Guardian as long ago as September that if Ukraine were to sign the integration agreement with the EU, "political and social chaos" would ensue and Russia could be "forced to intervene" to protect Russians in the east and south. What happened after the successful revolution is so close to what Glazyev predicted might happen if Yanukovych had taken Ukraine westbound that it is tempting to think a contingency plan for a different scenario was taken off the shelf and activated.

The events of recent months have also solidified the hold of "Eurasianism" on the imaginations of Russia's top lawmakers. This ideology envisions Russia's re-emergence as a conservative world power in direct opposition to the geopolitical hegemony and liberal values of the west. The ideology was largely developed by Alexander Dugin, the son of a KGB officer who has become the wide-eyed prophet predicting a "Russian spring", as he called his recent plan for Russia's domination of Europe via Ukraine. Dugin serves as an adviser to State Duma speaker Sergei Naryshkin, a key member of the ruling United Russia party who has loudly supported Russian intervention in Ukraine, and has made widely viewed television appearances to discuss the Ukraine crisis alongside high-ranking members of the government. Glazyev is also an associate of Dugin's.

Upset with western criticism of him when he returned to the presidency for a third term in 2012, Putin realised that an independent Russia could never be part of the "western club" as he had previously wanted, says Dugin. "Putin sees the west as his main enemy, but to come to this conclusion he lived through a lot, he lived through a historical situation," Dugin said. "He came to the same conclusion in practice as we did in theory."

Dugin Connection

David Duke, Alexander Dugin

Alexander Dugin is a "Russian ultranationalist" and former adviser to Sergei Naryshkin, a key member of Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party who was appointed Russian foreign intelligence chief in 2016. Dugin supports Orthodox Russia’s role as a bulwark against what he has portrayed as the decadent forces of the liberal West.

Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke made an appearance at the August 2017 Unite the Right rally, which he called a “turning point” and pledged that white nationalists would “fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”

Duke has made no secret of his admiration for Russia, describing the country as the “key to white survival,” and has been pictured alongside Alexander Dugin.,