The daughter of a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin has reportedly died in a car explosion aimed at her father.
Daria Dugina was killed Saturday night when the car she was driving exploded after leaving a literary festival she attended with her father, Alexander Dugin, near Moscow.
Dugina, a prominent journalist who openly supported the Russian invasion of Ukraine, was driving her father’s Toyota Land Cruiser Prado. For some reason, her father took another car at the last minute, Russian news service TASS reported.
“As far as I understand it, Alexander or maybe all of them were targets,” said Andrei Krasnov, head of Horizon’s social movement in Russia and a person familiar with her.
Dugina was sanctioned by the UK government last month for being a “frequent and high-profile poster of disinformation about Ukraine and its Russian aggression in Ukraine on various online platforms.” The British government said she promoted “policies or actions that destabilize Ukraine”.
Her father, Dugin, a political strategist, is believed to be a key adviser to President Putin. Known as the “Russian World”, Dugin’s philosophy has been cited as the motive for the invasion of Ukraine and, earlier, Georgia.
Dugin was reportedly an ultranationalist, and his previous publication, Fundamentals of Geopolitics, has been used extensively to influence Russia’s military, police, and foreign policy elites.He also gave his daughter Dugina his press secretary.
Dugina died at the scene, according to the press service of the Russian Commission of Investigation for the Moscow Region, TASS reported on Sunday. The car, engulfed in flames, left the road and crashed into a building in the town of Odintsovo, near the village of Borsye Vyazemi.
The head of the Donetsk People’s Republic has accused “terrorists of the Ukrainian regime”.
“The progress and results of investigations into criminal cases are under the control of the Moscow Regional Prosecutor’s Office,” the press said.
“All possible versions of the crime are being investigated,” the press service added.
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