On the outskirts of Moscow, a car bombing claimed the life of the daughter of a prominent Russian political theorist who is frequently referred to as “Putin’s brain,” according to authorities.
According to early evidence, the 29-year-old TV analyst Daria Dugina was killed by an explosion placed in the SUV she was driving on Saturday night, according to the Moscow department of the Russian Investigative Committee.
No one immediately took the blame. However, the slaughter led to accusations that her father, nationalist philosopher and writer Alexander Dugin, was the intended victim.
Dugin is a well-known supporter of the idea of the “Russian world,” a spiritual and political philosophy that places an emphasis on traditional values, the restoration of Russia’s dominance, and the unification of all ethnic Russians worldwide. He also fervently backs Russia’s deployment of troops into Ukraine.
His daughter was coming home from a fair she had attended with him when the explosion happened. Witnesses, according to some Russian media accounts, said that Dugin owned the SUV and had opted at the last minute to use a different car.
The violent incident, which was colorful and out of the ordinary for Moscow, is likely to raise tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
The separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, a pro-Moscow area at the center of Russian combat in Ukraine, is led by Denis Pushilin, who attributes the violence to “terrorists of the Ukrainian dictatorship, trying to kill Alexander Dugin.”
The assistant to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Mykhailo Podolyak, refuted accusations of complicity by asserting that his country is “not a criminal state, unlike Russia, and definitely not a terrorist state.”
Former Putin advisor and analyst Sergei Markov said to the Russian official news agency RIA-Novosti that Dugin, not his daughter, was likely the intended victim and that the Ukrainian Security Service and military intelligence are the most likely culprits.
Although it is unknown how closely connected Dugin is to Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin routinely quotes from his publications and appearances on Russian state television. He contributed to the spread of the “Novorossiya,” or New Russia, idea that Russia exploited to fund separatist insurgents in eastern Ukraine and to legitimize its annexation of Crimea in 2014.
He rejects Western liberal principles and extols Russia as a nation of religiosity, traditional values, and authoritarian rule.
Similar opinions were voiced by his daughter, who also appeared as a pundit on the nationalist TV station Tsargrad, where Dugin had been the head editor.
In March, the United States imposed sanctions on Dugina for her role as chief editor of United World International, a website that it deemed to be a source of misinformation. The sanctions declaration highlighted a United World article from this year that claimed to admit Ukraine to NATO would cause it to “perish.”
According to Tsargrad on Sunday, Dugina “like her father, has always been at the forefront of confrontation with the West.”
