Hungarian authorities have blocked Kremlin-connected nationalist Aleksandr Dugin from entering the European Union after arriving at a Greek airport, despite not being on any EU sanction lists.
Dugin, the anti-Western head of the Russia-based International Eurasian Movement, linked to the war in Ukraine, said Greek border guards refused to let him enter the country after he arrived at the airport in the city of Thessaloniki.
The border guards said he was stopped from entering the EU at the request of Hungarian authorities, Dugin told television channel Tsargrad on Tuesday.
The United States last year slapped sanctions on Dugin, citing his affiliation with a group that Washington says has “actively recruited individuals with military and combat experience to fight on behalf of Moscow-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.”
Dugin has courted both left-wing and right-wing political groups in Hungary, Greece, and other EU member states. He said he had traveled to Greece in connection with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s planned upcoming visit to the country.
He called his detention “rather strange,” saying that he had “freely traveled” in the EU in recent months.
“We are talking about an attempt to darken Russian-Greek relations,” Dugin said.
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