Darya Dugina was killed in a suspected car bomb explosion on Saturday
(Picture: via REUTERS)Russia has blamed Ukraine for the death of the daughter of a prominent associate of Vladimir Putin.
Darya Dugina - daughter of ultra-nationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin - died on Saturday evening in a suspected car bomb attack near Moscow.
Acquaintances of the 29-year-old journalist said the car she was driving belonged to her father and that he was probably the intended target.
Ukraine has denied involvement in the fatal attack. Mykhailo Podolyak, an advisor to Ukraine's President Zelensky, said Russian intelligence’s version of events was "Russian propaganda" from "a fictional world".
But Russia has pointed the finger at Ukraine’s secret services, accusing them of killing Dugina in a “special military operation”.
Alexander Dugin, 60, has advocated violence to achieve the unification of Russian-speaking and other territories in a new Russian empire. His daughter Dugina, who appeared regularly on state TV, was a strong supporter of Russia’s actions in Ukraine.
In his first public statement on his daughter’s death, he said Dugina had been savagely killed before his own eyes by Ukraine.
“Our hearts are not simply thirsting for revenge or retribution,” Dugin wrote. “We only need our victory (against Ukraine) My daughter has sacrificed her young life on the altar of victory. So please win!”
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying the attack on Dugina was carried out by a Ukrainian woman born in 1979, whom it named and whose picture and personal information appeared on Russian news websites.
The websites linked her to Ukraine’s security services and accused her of being a member of the Azov battalion, a unit of Ukraine’s army that Russia has designated a terrorist group.
FSB is quoted as saying the woman and her 12-year-old daughter arrived in Russia in mid-July before renting an apartment in the same housing block as Dugina.
It said she had attended an event outside Moscow on Saturday evening which Dugina and her father were also at, before fleeing to Estonia following Dugina’s death, the FSB was quoted as saying.
There was no immediate response from Ukraine to the FSB statement.
Russian law enforcement agencies had placed the Ukrainian woman on the country’s wanted list, the TASS news agency reported, with Moscow seeking her extradition from Estonia.
Estonia’s foreign ministry declined to comment and there was no immediate comment from Estonia’s interior ministry or police and border guard service.
President Vladimir Putin paid tribute to Dugina as a Russian patriot, while Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the Kremlin-backed RT media organisation, suggested Russian agents could track the woman down in Estonia.
Dugina’s father has long advocated the unification of Russian-speaking and other territories in a vast new Russian empire, which he wants to include Ukraine.
Dugin's influence over President Vladimir Putin has been a subject pf speculation, with some Russia watchers asserting that his sway is significant and many calling it minimal. He has no official ties to the Kremlin.
The United States imposed sanctions on Dugin in 2015 for being "responsible for or complicit in actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, or sovereignty or territorial integrity of Ukraine".
