The St. Petersburg forum showed rashism without a mask: nuclear war as a ‘good scenario’ for Russia

At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 3, 2026, something was said that in normal politics should have become a scandal within a minute. The founder of ‘Tsargrad’ Konstantin Malofeev and the ideologist of Russian imperialism Alexander Dugin presented scenarios for Russia’s future until 2050 — with war, the capture of Ukrainian cities, and a nuclear threat as elements of a ‘positive’ scenario.

The session itself was called ‘Main Threats to Russia in the Second Quarter of the 21st Century’ and took place on the ‘zero’ day of SPIEF-2026 in St. Petersburg. According to ‘Fontanka’, Malofeev, Dugin, the governor of the Vologda region Georgy Filimonov, and other participants spoke at it; the Tsargrad Institute’s report on scenarios and threats for Russia was discussed.

What Malofeev and Dugin presented at SPIEF

Konstantin Malofeev is the founder of the ‘Tsargrad’ TV channel and one of the prominent public sponsors of the ultra-conservative imperial agenda. Alexander Dugin is a philosopher and ideologist of the ‘Russian world’, whose ideas have long been used as justification for revanchism, anti-Western mobilization, and the war against Ukraine.

At the forum, they presented three scenarios for Russia’s future: bad, inertial, and good. In the bad scenario, according to Malofeev, by 2036, Russia suffers defeat in the war against Ukraine and in the confrontation with the West, and by 2050, it finds itself ‘colonized’. In the good scenario, on the contrary, Moscow sees ‘victory’, the collapse of the European Union, the annexation of Kyiv, Odessa, Kharkiv, and the transformation of Russia into one of the leaders of global security.

That is, the logic of the report is extremely clear. For the authors, ‘bad’ is not the death of people, not the destruction of regions, not poverty, not a demographic failure, and not the degradation of the country. Bad for them is if Ukraine remains free and the Russian imperial dream cannot plant a flag on foreign soil.

Nuclear threat as part of a ‘positive’ future

The most severe part of this story is the attitude towards nuclear weapons. According to Russian media reports, in the logic of the presented scenario, the use of nuclear weapons was not attributed to the ‘bad’ or even ‘inertial’ option, but was placed alongside the idea of a forceful, victorious future for Russia. ‘Delovoy Peterburg’ directly conveyed that for the ‘good’ scenario, Russia needs to use nuclear weapons, annex Kyiv, and become the absolute leader.

This is no longer just propaganda rhetoric. It is a demonstration of how rashism tries to normalize the very thought of nuclear war, presenting it not as a catastrophe for humanity, but as a tool for achieving a geopolitical goal.

For Israel, such logic is especially understandable and especially dangerous. A country that has lived surrounded by threats for decades knows well the price of words about ‘strategic deterrence’, ‘sacred war’, and ‘historical mission’. When such formulas are combined with nuclear weapons, it is no longer philosophy, but the language of potential mass murder.

Why this is important for Ukraine and Israel

At the center of the report is Ukraine. Not as an independent country, not as a people, not as a state with the right to security, but as a territory that in the ‘good’ scenario needs to be annexed. Kyiv, Odessa, Kharkiv are named not as cities with millions of inhabitants, but as trophies in the imperial project.

This detail shows the main diagnosis of rashism: in such a picture, someone else’s life is worth nothing. What matters is not the person, not the city, not the future of children, but the map, the symbol, and the ability to say that the empire has ‘returned’.

For the Israeli audience, there is a direct nerve here. Ukraine today is fighting not only for its territory but against a model of the world in which a strong regime can declare neighbors a ‘historical zone’, destroy cities, take children away, and then discuss it at an economic forum as a variant of national success.

NANews — Israel News | Nikk.Agency considers such statements not as an internal Russian excess, but as a signal for the entire region. If nuclear blackmail becomes part of public political fantasy, then tomorrow similar language may be used by other regimes — from the Iranian bloc to terrorist proxies, who are also accustomed to covering aggression with words about ‘mission’ and ‘justice’.

Russia in this project is needed by no one

The most indicative thing is that in these scenarios there is almost no Russia itself as a country of people. There is no normal conversation about Siberia, the Far East, poor regions, schools, hospitals, roads, demographics, industry, and quality of life.

‘Vedomosti’ noted that the report describes 15 threats — from geopolitics and demographics to economics, technology, and artificial intelligence. But the political center of the entire structure again boils down to war, ideology, autocracy, and a mobilization model.

That is why the conversation between Malofeev and Dugin looks not like a development strategy, but like a program of eternal fire. Russia in it is not a home for citizens, but fuel for the imperial machine. People are needed as a resource, the army as a tool, the past as a cult, the future as a justification for a new war.

Once after World War II, the main human toast was: ‘As long as there is no war’. In this version of the Russian future, everything is turned upside down. War is not a horror, but a norm. The nuclear threat is not an extreme catastrophe, but a point of the scenario. The capture of foreign cities is not a crime, but a ‘positive’ result.

St. Petersburg forum as a showcase of dangerous normalization

SPIEF is traditionally presented by Moscow as a business platform: investments, economy, partnerships, contracts, international guests. But in 2026, one of the loudest sessions showed another side of the forum — not the economy of the future, but political imagination, in which the future is built through war.

The place is also important. St. Petersburg, ‘Expoforum’, international sign, official stage. This is not a marginal chat and not a night broadcast for fanatics. This is a public platform where participants discuss such scenarios in the presence of elites and under the brand of an economic forum.

For Ukraine, this is another confirmation: it is not about a ‘territorial dispute’, not about a ‘security crisis’, and not about a misunderstanding between neighbors. It is about a consistent ideology of destroying Ukrainian subjectivity.

What remains behind the scenes

Behind the scenes of such reports are always real people. Residents of Kharkiv, Odessa, Kyiv. Ukrainian families who have already experienced shelling, occupation, evacuations, the death of loved ones, the abduction of children, and the destruction of homes.

Behind the scenes are also the Russians themselves, whom this system has been preparing for years not for a normal life, but for the role of material for someone else’s fantasies. They are promised greatness, but not security. They are told about ‘world justice’, but not explained why in a country with huge resources there is so little normal future for its own citizens.

That is why the St. Petersburg session with Malofeev and Dugin is important not only as another propaganda episode. It shows that rashism no longer hides its coordinate system: a free Ukraine for it is a defeat, the capture of Ukrainian cities is a success, and nuclear war is an acceptable tool.

This is not a development strategy. This is a political diagnosis of a regime that cannot imagine a future without someone else’s blood.