Darya Dugina, Daughter Of Russian Nationalist Dubbed Putin’s Brain, ‘Killed In Car Bomb’

The daughter of an ultra-nationalist Russian philosopher who helped to shape President Putin’s world view and is a keen supporter of his war in Ukraine has died in a car bomb attack in Moscow.

Kremlin allies were quick to point the finger at “Ukrainian terrorists”, days after a series of explosions at an airfield in Russian-occupied Crimea were attributed to Ukrainian saboteurs.

Darya Dugina, 29, died on a highway 30 miles west of Moscow after a blast ripped through the SUV that she was driving at about 9.30pm local time yesterday.

“An explosive device allegedly installed in a Toyota Land Cruiser car went off at full speed on a public highway, and then the car caught fire,” the state investigative committee said in a report. “The female driver died on the spot. The identity of the deceased has been established: it is the journalist and political scientist Darya Dugina.”

Investigators said they had established the bomb was placed on the bottom of the car, under the driver’s seat.

The incident prompted speculation that Dugina’s father Alexander Dugin, 60, a philosopher who has been called the Kremlin’s unofficial ideologue or “Putin’s brain”, was the intended target of an assassination attempt.

“Darya was driving another car but she took his car today, while Alexander went in a different way,” her friend Andrey Krasnov, the head of the Russky Gorizont (Russian Horizon) social movement, told Tass.

“She turned onto the Mozhayskoye highway near the village of Bolshiye Vyazemy, there was an explosion, the car caught fire immediately. The flames completely engulfed it. She lost control because she was driving at high speed and flew to the opposite side of the road.”

Krasnov said that Darya’s father was at the scene after the explosion, and video was published of him clutching his head as he regarded the blazing wreckage. “As far as I understand, Alexander or probably they together were the target,” Krasnov added.

While not holding a government position, Dugin is widely seen as having influenced Putin’s aggressive foreign policy.

His ideology of “Eurasianism” is an imperial form of nationalism which sees Russia as a unique civilisation that has rejected liberalism and inherited the mantle of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Such ideas reached a high point in the Kremlin with the invasion of Ukraine in February.

Dugina was herself sanctioned by the US Treasury in March over an article on the United World International website claiming that Ukraine would “perish” if it was admitted to Nato. Britain sanctioned her last month as a “frequent and high profile contributor of misinformation” on Ukraine.

The Russian outlet Baza reported that Dugina was returning from an arts festival in the village of Zakharovo in her father’s car and had been driving for ten minutes before the bomb went off. Dugin, who had given a lecture on “tradition and history” at the festival, was travelling in another vehicle. They had reportedly been due to travel in the same car until he changed his mind at the last moment.

Denis Pushilin, the pro-Kremlin leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, blamed Ukraine for the attack.

He posted a picture of Dugina on Telegram and wrote: “Vile scoundrels! The terrorists of the Ukrainian regime, trying to eliminate Alexander Dugin, blew up his daughter … in a car. Blessed memory of Darya, she is a real Russian girl!”

Maria Zakharova, chief spokeswoman for Russia’s foreign ministry, said that if a “Ukrainian trace” to the killing was confirmed, “and that theory was raised by the head of the DNR Denis Pushilin, and it needs to checked by the competent organs — then we are talking about state terrorism, realised by the Kyiv regime.”

Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst, said Dugin was in shock and had been admitted to hospital, without giving details.

Andrei Klishas, a pro-Kremlin senator, expressed his condolences to Dugin. “The terrorists must be destroyed, the contractors and those who ordered this, wherever they are,” he added.

Dugin was put on western sanctions lists for supporting Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Photo Credit: Getty