Russia claims Ukraine is to blame for the death of a Putin ally’s daughter

The daughter of hard-line Russian thinker Alexander Dugin was killed in a car bombing on the outskirts of Moscow, according to Russia’s FSB security agencies on Monday.

Dugin, a vociferous supporter of the Kremlin’s operation in Ukraine and an outspoken ultranationalist scholar, is believed to have been the attack’s intended victim.

According to a statement from the FSB that was picked up by Russian news organizations, “Ukrainian special services planned and carried out the crime.”

The perpetrator, a female Ukrainian citizen born in 1979, was said to have escaped to Estonia, a member of the EU, on Sunday.

The woman was identified as Natalia Vovk by the FSB in their statement.

When a bomb planted in a Toyota Land Cruiser detonated when Daria Dugina was driving on a highway about 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of Moscow, she was killed.

The attacker, who arrived in Russia in July 2022 with her minor daughter, rented an apartment in the same complex as Dugina, the FSB reported.

The FSB stated that the alleged assailant pursued Dugina in a Mini Cooper with license plates from Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and the secessionist Donetsk People’s Republic in eastern Ukraine.

On Saturday, Dugin and his daughter attended a festival outside of Moscow, according to the FSB, when the attacker was spotted.

Russian media reports claimed Dugina hurriedly borrowed her father’s automobile.

Dugin, 60, is an outspoken Russian ultranationalist scholar who has been referred to as “Putin’s Rasputin” or “Putin’s brain.”

He has long supported Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine and long called for the merger of all Russian-speaking nations into a sizable new Russian empire.

After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, a move he supported, he was added to a list of individuals subject to Western sanctions.

Mykhaylo Podolyak, a presidential adviser for Ukraine, refuted Kyiv officials’ involvement in the blast on Sunday.

AFP