Investigators work at the site of a suspected car bomb attack that killed Darya Dugina, daughter of the nationalist Russian ideologue Aleksandr Dugin, in the Moscow region on August 21, 2022.
Investigative Committee of Russia/Handout via REUTERS
The daughter of an influential Russian intellectual was killed by a car bomb, Russia said.
Who is behind it is unknown. Some Putin allies rushed to blame Ukraine and called for attacks on Kyiv.
Others pointed to movements within Russia that could be responsible.
The death of a top Vladimir Putin ally’s daughter has added a new layer of confusion and potential escalation to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Darya Dugina, the daughter of an influential nationalist Russian philosopher, was killed on Saturday by an apparent car bomb, Russian officials said. The work of Dugina’s father, Aleksandr Dugin, helped influence Putin, and Dugina was also a proponent both of his thinking and Russia’s invasion.
Who caused her death — which a family friend suggested may have been the outcome of efforts to target her father — is unknown. Russia has opened a murder investigation.
But some Putin allies rushed to blame Ukraine without producing evidence, and called for greater attacks on the country despite its denials of any involvement. And a former Russian lawmaker exiled in Ukraine pointed to an underground dissident group in Russia looking to overthrow Putin.
A dissident group
Ilya Ponomarev, a former Russian MP currently living in exile in Kyiv, said he believed the National Republican Army was responsible.
He made his comments on February Morning, a Russian-language TV channel he created in Ukraine that challenges Putin, The Guardian reported.
Ponomarev said the National Republican Army is a group that opposes Putin and thinks he “sent Russian soldiers to certain and senseless death,” The Guardian reported.
“This attack opens a new page in Russian resistance to Putinism. New — but not the last,” he said. The Guardian noted that it could not verify his claims about the attack or the group.
Blaming Ukraine
Maria Zakharova, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, suggested that Ukraine could be responsible in a Monday Telegram post.
She said if Ukraine’s involvement was “confirmed” then “we should talk about the policy of state terrorism implemented by the Kyiv regime.”
Ukraine has denied any involvement.
Mikhail Podolyak, an advisor at the Ukrainian presidential office, tweeted on Monday that Russia needed to understand “the world sees war live,” and so Russian “attempts” to blame Dugina’s death or other attacks on Ukraine “are useless.”
He told Ukrainian TV, according to CNN: “Ukraine definitely has nothing to do with this because we are not a criminal state, which the Russian Federation is, and even more so, we are not a terrorist state.”
Putin and other Russian officials have not commented on Dugina’s death.
Potential escalation
Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of Russian state-media outlet RT, said Russiaa should fire missiles targeting Ukraine’s “decision-making centers,” The Telegraph reported.
The Telegraph called her “one of Vladimir Putin’s favorite pro-war TV pundits.”
She did not explicitly say she blamed Ukraine, but called for attacks on Kyiv.
Minutes after posting the initial news of Dugina’s death on Telegram, she shared the address of Ukraine’s security service headquarters in Kyiv and wrote: “I will try to sleep now, and when I wake up, I hope to read in the news that it was fucking bombed along with the basements.”
She later wrote: “I don’t understand why there are still buildings on Bankova Street in Kyiv,” referring to the street with the Presidential Administration of Ukraine and other official buildings.
The Russian outlet Tsargrad TV, where Dugina was a commentator and her father is the editor, said “Kyiv should shake” from missile strikes, The Telegraph reported.
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, summed up the uncertainty to CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, as he said he hoped Ukraine was not responsible.
“There are so many factions and internecine warfare within Russian society, within the Russian government. Anything is possible.”