The daughter of a Russian ideologue who is one of the most prominent supporters of president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine died in a car bombing outside Moscow on Saturday night.
Russian investigators claim Daria Dugina was a nationalist journalist, and political analyst. Her Toyota Land Cruiser exploded outside Odintsovo (a suburb located about 20 km west of Moscow).
The bomb was placed under the car on the driver’s side and killed Dugina on the spot, investigators added, indicating “the crime was planned in advance on [someone’s] orders”.
The attack occurred after Ukraine attempted to mount a series more daring attacks on Russia-seized territory. This was hundreds of miles away from the frontline in mainland Russia in recent weeks.
Alexander Dugin was her father. Alexander had taken her along to a lecture at a festival near the capital on Saturday. Andrei Krasnov, a friend to Dugina, stated that the far-right philosopher had originally planned to travel with her following the lecture but decided instead to change cars.
Mykhailo Podolyak was a senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zeleskyy and denied that Kyiv was involved. “Ukraine has absolutely nothing to do with this, because we are not a criminal state like Russia, or a terrorist one at that,” Podolyak told Ukrainian television. Dugin’s friends and prominent supporters of the war called for Russia to retaliate against Kyiv.
“She took his car today, while Alexander went in a different way. He returned, he had been at the scene of the tragedy. As far as I understand, Alexander or probably they together were the target,” Krasnov said.
Telegram’s news channel 112, posted a video of Dugin standing in front of flaming debris on a road. He was apparently there to witness the explosion.
Dugina, 29, is the first high-profile supporter of Putin’s invasion to be killed in the environs of Moscow, where life has largely gone on as normal despite western sanctions aimed at sapping the Kremlin’s war effort.
“Daria’s despicable murder is a sign of the enemy’s cowardice and powerlessness. His death throes. He can’t fight honourably, so he kills the best of us,” said Konstantin Malofeyev, a tycoon who bankrolls a nationalist news channel where both Dugins previously worked. “The enemy will answer for this very soon.”
The Eurasia movement, founded by the elder Dugin, advocates for a revanchist Russian empire to help Moscow gain greater control over its European-Asian hinterlands.
A former dissident philosopher in the Soviet era, Dugin’s writings found an audience among some hardline senior members in the security services, then appeared to provide inspiration for Putin’s decision to annex Crimea and start a slow-burning war in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region in 2014.
Though Dugin’s influence over Putin was sometimes overstated — he lost his teaching position at Moscow’s main university and his appearances on state television were curtailed — the US and Canada sanctioned him in 2015 after his Eurasia movement recruited volunteers to fight in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
Dugina, who was a part of the Eurasia movement with her father, was sanctioned by the US in March for her role in running a Russian propaganda website. The UK described her as a “frequent and high-profile contributor of disinformation” about the invasion.
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