Authorities should begin the mass relocation of people from Russia’s major cities to rural areas due to potential nuclear war with the West.

Axar.az reports, citing Russian media, that Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin made the remarks.

“Russian megacities, where all life, industry and the economy are concentrated, are becoming tempting targets for precision strikes,” Dugin said.

He called for the “immediate and mass resettlement of cities, especially megacities,” claiming that rural life could also help address Russia’s demographic problems.

Dugin predicted that major cities such as Moscow, St Petersburg and Yekaterinburg could disappear in a future conflict.

“There will be no large cities: neither Moscow, nor St Petersburg, nor Yekaterinburg,” he said. “People will go to the land and live there peacefully.”

He also suggested converting empty high-rise buildings into technological facilities, saying: “High-rise buildings can be given over to farms, for example, for bitcoin mining. Let computers live there, let robots live there.”