On Monday, Russia moved swiftly to assign blame for the audacious vehicle bombing that occurred over the weekend and claimed the life of the daughter of a prominent right-wing political thinker in Russia. Russia accused Ukrainian intelligence to be responsible for the attack. Ukraine denied participation.
A remotely controlled explosive device that was planted in Daria Dugina’s SUV exploded on Saturday night as she was driving on the outskirts of Moscow, ripping the vehicle apart and killing her on the spot, according to the authorities. Daria Dugina, who was 29 years old and worked as a commentator for a nationalist Russian television channel, was killed instantly.
It was widely believed that her father, Alexander Dugin, who is a philosopher, writer, and political theorist and who is an ardent supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to send troops into Ukraine, was the intended target of the attack. Alexander Dugin has been a vocal supporter of Putin’s decision to send troops into Ukraine.
Witnesses who were mentioned in the Russian media as stating that the SUV belonged to Dugin and that he had made the decision to drive in another car at the last minute were cited as saying that the SUV was his.
The Russian Federal Security Service, also known as the FSB and the primary successor to the KGB, said that the Ukrainian special services were responsible for both the planning and execution of Dugina’s murder.
According to the FSB, a native of Ukraine named Natalya Vovk was the one who carried out the murder and subsequently escaped to Estonia.
The office of the prosecutor general in Estonia issued a statement that was quoted by Baltic News Services in which it said that it has not received any requests or enquiries from the authorities in Russia about this matter.
According to the FSB, Vovk travelled to Russia in July with her daughter, who was 12 years old, and leased an apartment in the same building as Dugina’s residence in order to follow her about.
It was said that Vovk and her daughter were there at a nationalist celebration that Dugin and his daughter were also present at immediately before to the murder.
According to the FSB, Vovk entered Russia using a licence plate from the Russian-backed rebel Donetsk area of Ukraine, then switched to a Kazakhstan plate in Moscow, and finally switched back to a Ukrainian plate before entering Estonia.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an assistant to the president of Ukraine, has denied that his country had anything to do with the incident. In a tweet, he called the allegations made by the FSB a work of fiction and said that they were the result of a power struggle between several Russian security organisations.
Putin decried the brutal and deceitful execution in a letter that he sent to Dugin and his wife. He noted that Dugina has honestly served people and the Fatherland, demonstrating what it means to be a patriot of Russia via her activities. Putin also expressed his condolences to Dugin’s family.
Maria Zakharov, a spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said that the assassination of Dugina exemplified Kiev’s dependence on terrorism as a tool of its criminal ideology.
In a statement, Dugin referred to his daughter as “a rising star,” and he lamented the fact that Russia’s adversaries were the ones who were responsible for her death.
The blast, which was unprecedented for Moscow since the gang warfare that plagued the city throughout the tumultuous 1990s, prompted demands from Russian nationalists to react by increasing their attacks on Ukraine.
An analyst who supports the Kremlin named Sergei Markov suggested that the individuals responsible for the murder of Lysa Dugina may have hoped to incite a rift within the Russian elite between those who support a political solution to bring an end to the fighting in Ukraine and those who favour more aggressive military action. Markov made this argument in his article.
Some people in the West have referred to Dugin as Putin’s brain and Putin’s Rasputin. Dugin has been a prominent proponent of the Russian world concept, which is a spiritual and political ideology that emphasises traditional values, the restoration of Russia’s global influence. Dugin has also been called Putin’s Rasputin.
The idea of Novorossiya, also known as New Russia, was popularised with the assistance of Dugin. Russia utilised this notion to legitimise the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine in 2014 and its backing of separatist fighters in eastern Ukraine.
In March, the United States imposed sanctions on Dugina herself for her work as the head editor of United World International, a website that the United States government has referred to as a source of misinformation.
Last week, during an interview on Russian television, Dugina referred to the United States as a “zombie civilization,” describing it as a place where people detest Russia but are unable to locate it on a map.