The journalist Darja Dugina died on Saturday evening when an explosive device presumably attached to the vehicle in which she was traveling detonated. The Russian Foreign Ministry named Ukraine as a possible mastermind. The government in Kyiv rejected this.
The state news agency TASS, citing an acquaintance of Dugina, reported that the vehicle belonged to her father and that he was probably the target of the attack. Father and daughter went to a festival and Dugin only decided at the last moment to get into another car, the government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported.
According to investigators, Dugina’s car exploded on Saturday evening while driving in a suburban settlement in Moscow region. Investigators released a video of the experts working on site. According to initial findings, an explosive device was mounted on the vehicle, which detonated. There were videos of the burning vehicle on social networks. It will be determined in different directions, it said in the statement of the investigators. The highest investigative authority in Russia took over the investigation and spoke of indications of a contract killing.
Dugina was an ardent supporter of war
The 29-year-old journalist and political scientist was considered a fervent supporter of Russia’s war of conquest against Ukraine. She was on Britain’s sanctions list for spreading propaganda and false news about the invasion ordered by Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin on February 24. Dugina was also placed on a US sanctions list, according to a US Treasury Department statement in March.
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The father of the dead, the radical author Dugin, is repeatedly described by the media and authors as a whisperer or as the “brains” of Russian President Putin and as a source of ideas for the attack on Ukraine. However, Dugin’s influence on Putin, who is on a US sanctions list, has been the subject of speculation: while some Russia observers claim his influence is significant, others say it is minimal.
Also networked with Austrian right-wing extremists
Among other things, Dugin advocates that Ukraine must be part of a new Russian empire. The ultra-nationalist publicist is also well networked with right-wing extremists in Europe and has in the past been well received by identitarians and right-wing politicians in Austria.
Zelenskyy rejects responsibility: “Ukraine is not a terrorist state”
Sunday’s attack sparked horror among Russian nationalists and pro-Russian forces in Ukraine. “The terrorists of the Ukrainian regime tried to liquidate Alexander Dugin and blew up his daughter… in the car,” wrote the leader of the separatist stronghold of Donetsk, Denis Puzhilin, on the Telegram news channel. Darja will be remembered – as a “real Russian girl”. Some commentators in Ukraine doubted that forces in the country attacked by Russia are currently capable of carrying out such an assassination. A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry said that if the trail led to Ukraine, it would be an indication of a policy of “state terrorism” by the government in Kyiv. An advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy replied on Ukrainian television that, unlike Russia, Ukraine is not a “terrorist state”. “Of course, Ukraine has nothing to do with yesterday’s explosion because we are not a criminal state – like the Russian Federation – and certainly not a terrorist state,” said Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podoliak, according to the Ukrajinska Pravda Internet portal, during a television appearance on Sunday. Podoljak spoke of power struggles between different political factions in Russia. The incident was a revenge of fate on supporters of the Russian attack on Ukraine. The death of Dugin’s daughter is strongly reminiscent of a provocation by the Russian secret services, commented the Kiev political scientist Volodymyr Fessenko on Facebook. “It’s her style,” he wrote. Fessenko also speculated that the attack could provide a pretext for massive rocket attacks on Ukrainian cities on Independence Day, August 24.
Video: Russia correspondent Miriam Beller comments from Moscow on the latest developments in the Ukraine war:
Source: Nachrichten
