Aug 22 (Reuters) – Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) on Monday accused Ukraine’s secret services of carrying out the weekend murder of Darya Dugina, the daughter of an ultra-nationalist Russian ideologue, Russian news agencies reported.
Dugina, daughter of prominent ideologue Alexander Dugin, was killed on Saturday evening when a suspected explosive device blew up the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving, Russian investigators said. Ukraine has denied involvement.
The FSB said the attack was carried out by a Ukrainian woman born in 1979 whom it named.
It said the woman and her teenage daughter had arrived in Russia in July and spent a month preparing the attack by renting an apartment in the same housing block and researching Dugina’s lifestyle, according to an FSB statement carried by Russian news agencies.
The assailant had attended an event outside Moscow on Saturday evening which Dugina and her father were also at, before carrying out a “controlled explosion” of Dugina’s car, and fleeing Russia to Estonia, the FSB was quoted as saying.
Reuters was unable to confirm the reports.
Ukrainian officials denied they had any links to the murder of Darya Durgina, but have still warned of increased Russian attacks around Ukraine’s Independence Day on August 24, which also marks six months since the start of the war.
Ms Dugina was killed as she drove back to central Moscow in a Toyota Land Cruiser from a literary and arts festival on the outskirts of the city where her father, the prominent ultra-nationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin, had been speaking.
It is likely that Mr Dugin, who has been called “Putin’s brain” and has been close to the Kremlin, was the intended target. He was supposed to drive into Moscow with his daughter, but decided at the last minute to travel back in another car.
Russian investigators said that Ms Dugina, 29, had died immediately “from an explosive device which had been placed under the bottom of the car on the driver’s side””.
Ms Dugina was a journalist who had shot to prominence since the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. She had reported from Mariupol in southern Ukraine, where Ukrainian soldiers in the city’s steelworks had fought off Russian attacks for weeks.
She was also a regular on trips organised by the Russian government to rebel-held Donbas in eastern Ukraine.
Ms Dugina was a vocal supporter of her father, who is perhaps the most prominent ultra-nationalist thinker in Russia. He advocates the Kremlin’s rule over a greater Eurasian state, and has called for the destruction of Ukraine.
After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Mr Dugin had encouraged the Kremlin to “kill, kill, kill” Ukrainians, and he celebrated Mr Putin’s full-scale invasion in February.
Analysts have questioned how influential Mr Dugin has been over the Kremlin’s aggressive foreign policy, but he is nevertheless an important figurehead for hardcore Slavic nationalism.
Echoing her father’s aggressive tones during her appearances on Russian state TV, Ms Dugina also regularly advocated the destruction of Ukraine.
Margarita Simonyan, one of Vladimir Putin’s favourite pro-war TV pundits, said that missile strikes should target Ukraine’s “decision-making centres”.
Meanwhile, Tsargrad TV, the Russian orthodox and nationalist TV network where Mr Dugin is the editor and Ms Dugina had been a commentator, said that “Kyiv should shake” from missiles strikes.
But in Kyiv, the Ukrainian government denied that it had anything to do with Ms Dugina’s murder. “We are not a criminal state, like the Russian Federation, and moreover we are not a terrorist state,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, a top presidential adviser.
Although pro-Ukraine partisan attacks have increased in occupied Kherson and Crimea in recent weeks, Moscow appears to be a big stretch for its military and intelligence capabilities.
Veteran Russia watchers speculate that the murder is more likely to be a false flag attack, staged by the Kremlin to give Putin, the Russian president, reason to retaliate.
A so-called attack like this on Russian soil could be what the Kremlin needs to galvanise the Russian public into backing its war in Ukraine more strongly.
The invasion has stalled and it feels distant. The Russian public is distracted.
By bringing it home to Moscow, Putin may be able to whip up Russian public support to allow him to escalate the war to a full mobilisation and even relaunch attacks on Kyiv, where the Russian army was humiliated in March.
Other, perhaps less plausible, theories include rogue units of Russia’s powerful FSB, the heir to the KGB, and a contract killing to settle a personal score or send a message.
Russia’s FSB and security services are notoriously large, unwieldy, violent and fractured.
The Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine has killed tens of thousands of Russian servicemen, with many more injured. Kremlin propaganda has shielded most of the Russian public from seeing this cost, but Russia’s security services have been exposed. A rogue unit may have decided that it is time to rebel.
But while there have been rumblings of dissent within Russia’s security apparatus, there has been no major rebellion – and the assassination of Dugina is an odd way to kick off a rebellion.
Another theory is that a disgruntled wealthy Russian businessman who is against the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine paid for Alexander Dugin, then ultra-nationalist philosopher close to the Kremlin and reportedly the intended target, to be killed in order to send a message.
A false flag attack may appear the most likely, but it raises further questions of the collateral damage the Kremlin is willing to inflict on itself.
Photo – A still image taken from a handout video footage made available 21 August 2022 by the Russian Investigative Committee shows investigators working at the scene of a car explosion on Mozhaisk highway near the village of Bolshiye Vyazemi in the Odintsovo urban district in the Moscow region, Russia. EPA-EFE/RUSSIAN INVESTIGATIVE COMMITTEE
Read more via The Telegraph
