The daughter of Alexander Dugin, a hardline Russian ideologue close to President Vladimir Putin, has died in a car bombing outside Moscow, officials said Sunday.
Dugin, who is a vocal supporter of the Kremlin attack in Ukraine, was likely the target of the blast because his daughter borrowed a car at the last minute, according to family members cited by Russian media.
Daria Dugina was killed when a bomb planted in her Toyota Land Cruiser exploded while driving on a highway near the village of Borsier Vijomi, about 40 kilometers from Moscow, according to a Russian commission of inquiry.
Dugina, a journalist born in 1992 and an open supporter of the attack, died at the scene and a murder investigation has opened, the commission to investigate major Russian criminal cases said.
In July, Britain put her on a list of sanctioned Russians for spreading false information about Ukraine online.
Sometimes called “Putin’s Rasputin” or “Putin’s brain”, 60-year-old Dugin is an outspoken Russian ultranationalist intellectual.
He has long advocated Russian-speaking unity in the vast new Russian empire, and has wholeheartedly supported Moscow’s operations in Ukraine.
After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, he was placed on the Western sanctions list, which he also supported.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the bombing.
The head of one of Ukraine’s separatist areas blamed the Kyiv authorities for the explosion.
“Terrorists in the Ukrainian regime tried to liquidate Alexander Dugin, but blew up his daughter,” DNR chief Denis Pushrin wrote in Telegram.
“If the Ukrainian theory had to be confirmed and verified by the competent authorities, it would amount to state terrorism on the part of the Kyiv regime,” Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, told Telegram. wrote.
