Russia blames the Ukrainian secret services for the murder of the daughter of Dugin, an ideologue of the Kremlin | International

The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) claims to have solved in less than 48 hours the murder of Daria Dugina, the daughter of the ultranationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin, who died this Saturday when a bomb attached to the underside of the car he was driving exploded near Bolshie Viaziomy, about 40 kilometers from Moscow. “The crime was planned and committed by the Ukrainian special services,” Russian espionage has assured through a statement in which it has even given names and surnames to the alleged author – a Ukrainian citizen, according to the FSB – of an attack that happened in a place where the cameras installed everywhere in Russia had stopped working days before. The accusation threatens to further heighten tension between Moscow and kyiv, two days before August 24, six months after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and at a time when the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, warns that Russia is preparing an offensive for that date.

Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences on Monday “for a vile and cruel crime,” and stressed that Dugina “honestly served the people, the Homeland, demonstrated with deeds what it means to be a patriot of Russia.”

According to the FSB, the material author of the murder of Dugina, 30, is an alleged Ukrainian citizen. “The executor is Natalia Pavlovna Vovk, born in 1979 and who arrived in Russia on July 23, 2022 together with her daughter Sofia Mijailovna Shaban, born in 2010 ″. According to Russian intelligence, “Vovk and her daughter left through the Pskov region for Estonia.” The FSB has detailed that this woman allegedly rented an apartment in Moscow and used a Mini Cooper model car with different license plates to monitor her target. After the murder of Dugina, always according to the FSB, the alleged perpetrator of the crime and her daughter left Russia through the border with Estonia.

The FSB does not mention any more names or who was the supposed target of the bomb. Several people close to the Russian philosopher said that Dugin decided not to accompany his daughter in the vehicle at the last moment, statements that encouraged cabals about whether, in fact, he could have been the real target of the one who placed the explosive. After the attack, the man considered one of the ideologues of Russian policy towards Ukraine, went to the place where his daughter had just died, according to investigators, on the spot.

kyiv on Sunday denied hints from the Kremlin that it might have been behind the attack. “Ukraine has absolutely nothing to do with this because we are not a terrorist or criminal state like Russia,” said the Ukrainian president’s top adviser, Mikhailo Podoliak.

The Russian Investigative Committee had already confirmed this Sunday that someone placed an explosive device under the seat of the Toyota Land Cruiser that Daria Dugina was driving. “It has been established that the bomb was detonated remotely. Presumably, the car was followed,” a police source told the Russian agency TASS that day.

In a country with thousands of cameras everywhere, those in the Tradition festival parking lot, which Daria Dugina had attended this Saturday, did not work. The woman had come to attend a lecture by her father. Subsequently, the Eurasian Youth Union appealed to the participants in this event to keep their mobile recordings. “The investigation has found that the parking cameras were not working, so any footage can ultimately help,” Natalia Makéyeva, deputy director of the Center for Geopolitical Expertise, told the Ria Novosti news agency.

an open letter

Alexander Dugin, admitted to a hospital after the attack, has written an open letter with his reflections that has been released this Monday. In it he supports the government’s version that the murder was promoted by kyiv, and sees the death of his daughter as a sacrifice for his nation. Dugin is not a close adviser to the president, Vladimir Putin, but he is considered an ideologue of reference in the most ultra-nationalist circle that gravitates around the Kremlin.

“Our hearts long for more than revenge or retribution. It’s too petty, not Russian. We just need our victory. My daughter put her life as a maiden on her altar, ”says the philosopher in his open message. “May she inspire the children of our country in her deed,” he adds.

Dugin’s writing is an ode for Russia to continue its offensive against Ukraine. “We, our people, cannot be broken even by such unbearable blows,” he says after recalling his daughter, “a beautiful Orthodox girl, patriot, military correspondent, expert on the central channels and philosopher” who “never called the violence or war

Dugina, who studied Philosophy in France and later joined the International Eurasian Movement, had participated last week in the Armiya-2022 (army) military forum with a dissertation in which he branded the Bucha massacre as a Western staging. Likewise, when the war began, he wrote on his Telegram channel the following reflection: “Last night I was walking down a deserted street in Moscow, and in the distance a Russian flag was waving. And a silent whisper: the Russians march. Women’s intuition is powerful. She came up with the motto “Empire, be!” I woke up and the empire became a reality.”

Firm hand

The explosion has brought to mind a page that seemed past with Putin in power, the waves of car bomb attacks among the Russian elite in the nineties of the last century, but it has also given wings to those who advocate a strong hand towards Ukraine . The television of businessman Konstantin Malofeyev, Tsargrad TV (Constantinople in Slavonic), has urged, for example, to annihilate the neighboring country to the ground. “After the murder of Daria Platonova (Dugina), our duty is to destroy the weapon of evil. Destroy Ukraine as a terrorist state. We cannot exist on the same Earth as Ukraine. It is impossible to coexist with infernal evil”, published as an editorial the media of an oligarch who has been accused by the West and the pro-Russian separatists of sponsoring, at the request or with the approval of the Kremlin, the military irruption that unleashed the war in Donbas in 2014.

The director of the state channel RT, Margarita Simonián, repeated on her Twitter profile several times the slogan “Decision-making centers!”, referring to a threat made months ago by Moscow that any attack on Russian soil would be met with bombings against the cardinal points of the Government and the defense of Ukraine.

For her part, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, María Zajárova, announced this Sunday that if the Russian investigation found kyiv guilty, then a step forward would have to be taken “and the policy of state terrorism implemented by the regime should be discussed. of Kyiv”.

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