Duginphilia has always been much more of an ethnic Russian far-right phenomenon (so Chechen militias raised by Kadyrov and the Buryat+Sakha conscripts in the Z trucks that are committing war crimes are excluded), which unsurprisingly were the same groups thaat have been fighting in Donbas from 2014-22.
Yet bigger picture, Dugin's book viewed the PRC as an existential threat to Russia (unsurprising due to the multiple near wars the USSR and PRC almost fought in the 60s and 70s). If Dugin had any credence, Putin wouldn't have signed the Russia-China Strategic Partnership in 2013-14, which has been upgraded to a full fledged economic and political alliance in the aftermath of the 2022 invasion; Putin+Medvedev wouldn't have caused a standoff with the JSDF from 2011-2013 when Cruise Missles were deployed on the Kuril Islands and the JSDF and VVF were scrambling with each other; nor would Putin have allowed BRI investments in Central Asia (Russia's Near Abroad). All these policies are direct contradictions to Dugin's core thesis (China bad. Make Japan our friend to make an axis against China threatening our Near Abroad)
> I assume the IR community you are referring to also were the ones yelling that Russia wouldn't re-invade Ukraine because they were dependent on oil money from the EU.
Which IR community are you talking about? People affiliated to the main American think tanks (eg. Atlantic Council [0] and CSIS [1]) were warning about an escalation to the Russian-Ukraine conflict months before the 2022 Invasion began. If you are talking about "Geopolitics Commentators" on CNN, NYT, WaPo, Fox, Youtube, etc they're out of the loop. For IR Policy, the DoD, DHS, Senate+House subcommittees would go straight to the think tanks to be briefed (and have a backchannel to initiate diplomacy).
[0] - https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/event/russias-dangerous-mili...
[1] - https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-possible-invasion-ukra...