‘Car bomb’ kills daughter of Putin’s confidant, probe on

Moscow, August 21

The daughter of an ultra-nationalist Russian ideologue was killed in a suspected car bomb attack outside Moscow, Russian state investigators said on Sunday.

Darya Dugina, daughter of prominent ideologue Alexander Dugin, was killed on Saturday evening after a suspected explosive device blew up the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving, investigators said.

The Russian Foreign Ministry speculated that Ukraine might have been behind the attack. However, Ukraine denied any involvement.

Russia’s state news agency quoted Andrei Krasnov, someone who knew Dugina, as saying the vehicle belonged to her father and that he was probably the intended target.

The father and daughter had been attending a festival outside Moscow and Dugin had decided to switch cars at the last minute, a Russian government newspaper reported. TV footage accompanying a statement by Moscow region investigators showed officers collecting debris and fragments from the spot, where the explosion happened.

The statement, which described Darya Dugina as a journalist and political expert, said investigators had opened a murder case and would be carrying out forensic examinations.

Investigators were considering “all versions” when it came to working out who was responsible, it said. The head of Russia’s Investigative Committee ordered the institution’s central branch to take over the probe. “An explosive device was placed on the underside of the car on the driver’s side,” the committee said in a statement. — Reuters

‘Nothing to do with it’

• Ukraine presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said: “I confirm that Ukraine has nothing to do with this because we are not a criminal state like Russia and moreover, we are not a terrorist state.”
• He blamed internal power struggles between “various political factions” in Russia for the killing.

Ardent advocate of unification of Russian-speaking areas

• Darya Dugina (30) supported her father Alexander Dugin’s ideas and appeared on state TV in her own right to offer support for Russia’s actions in Ukraine
• In a statement in March, the US Treasury said Dugina, the chief editor of the United World International website, which had suggested Ukraine would “perish” if admitted to the NATO military alliance, had been put on a US sanctions list
• Alexander Dugin (60) has long advocated the unification of Russian-speaking and other territories in a vast new Russian empire
• He wants the empire to include Ukraine, where Russia is carrying out what Moscow calls a ‘special military operation’ to demilitarise Ukraine