The daughter of a Russian nationalist ideologue often referred to as “Putin’s mastermind” was killed when her car exploded on the outskirts of Moscow, officials said Sunday. The Investigative Committee’s department for the Moscow region said the explosion on Saturday night was caused by a bomb planted in the SUV driven by Daria Dugina. The 29-year-old was the daughter of Alexander Dugin, a prominent supporter of the ideology of the “Russian world” and a staunch supporter of sending Russian troops to Ukraine. Dugin’s exact ties to President Vladimir Putin are unclear, but the Kremlin often echoes rhetoric from his writings and appearances on Russian state television. It helped popularize the concept of “Novorossiya” (New Russia) that Russia used to justify its annexation of Crimea and its support for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine. It promotes Russia as a country of piety, traditional values and authoritarian leadership and despises Western liberal values. Dugina expressed similar views and had appeared as a commentator on the nationalist Tsargrad TV channel. She was sanctioned by the United States in March for her work as editor-in-chief of United World International, a website the US described as a disinformation site. The sanctions announcement cited a UWI article this year which argued that Ukraine would be “disappeared” if admitted to NATO. “Dasa, like her father, has always been at the forefront of the confrontation with the West,” Chargrad said on Sunday, using the familiar form of her name. The explosion occurred as Dugina was returning from a cultural festival she had attended with her father. Some Russian media reported witnesses that the vehicle belonged to her father and that she decided at the last minute to travel in another car. The lively and violent incident, unusual for Moscow, is likely to exacerbate Russia-Ukraine animosity. No suspects were immediately located. But Denis Pushilin, president of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, which is at the heart of Russia’s fighting in Ukraine, blamed it on “terrorists of the Ukrainian regime, who tried to kill Alexander Dugin”. Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, denied Ukrainian involvement, telling national television that “We are not a criminal state, unlike Russia, and certainly not a terrorist state.” Analyst Sergei Markov, a former adviser to Putin, told Russia’s state-run RIA-Novosti news agency that Alexander Dugin, not his daughter, was likely the intended target and said “it is absolutely obvious that the most likely suspects are Ukrainian military intelligence and the Security Service of Ukraine. .”
