Who killed Daria Dugina?

This week marks six months since Russia invaded Ukraine, and just when
analysts were saying that the fighting was settling into a stalemate, a car-bomb
attack on the outskirts of Moscow raised the prospect that the war could take an
unpredictable turn.

Daria Dugina, a 29-year-old commentator with hawkish, imperialist views,

was killed on the spot Saturday when a bomb placed inside her Toyota Land
Cruiser detonated as she sped along a highway west of Moscow.

Her father, Aleksandr Dugin, an outspoken Russian ultranationalist, was in a car

behind her and saw the flames engulfing the vehicle. Both were vocal supporters
of the war in Ukraine, and the brazen attack has raised fears of an escalation.

The target

In the hours after the attack, there was speculation that Dugina was not the
intended target. She and her father were driving from a nationalist festival
outside Moscow when the blast occurred. Some Russian media reported that
Dugin himself was supposed to be in the car and went into the other vehicle only
at the last minute.

Dugin, 60, has sometimes been called “Putin’s brain” or “Putin’s philosopher.”
He has long occupied an ultranationalist fringe that advocated the Eurasianism
theory, which sees a restored Russian empire standing against the “Atlantic”
world led by the U.S. Putin echoed the philosophy when he declared at the start
of the invasion that Russia was fighting an American-led “empire of lies.”

The U.S. imposed sanctions on him in 2015 for his role in policies that threatened
Ukraine, including helping to recruit fighters for Russian-backed separatists.

Dugina followed in her father’s footsteps. In the days before her death, she
argued against Western hegemony on a state television talk show, and in a
lecture described atrocities committed by Russian soldiers in Bucha as a staged event.

Britain and the U.S. have imposed sanctions on her for spreading disinformation
about Ukraine and the war.

Daria Dugina and Aleksandr Dugin were both vocal supporters of the war in Ukraine. Tsargrad.Tv, via
Reuters; Moscow News Agency, via Reuters

The location

Dugina was killed close to the glittering Moscow suburb known as Rublyovka,
where many members of Russia’s ruling class own sprawling villas.

“Rublyovka is shivering,” a pro-Kremlin political analyst, Sergei Markov, wrote

on the Telegram social network. “This act of terror is a message for them: Be
afraid, you could be next.”

The fallout

Today Russia’s F.S.B. domestic intelligence agency blamed the attack on Ukraine and
said that Dugina was the intended target. It said that a Ukrainian woman had carried
out the operation and then left Russia for Estonia. A senior Russian lawmaker,
Vladimir Dzhabarov, said that if Estonia did not hand over the woman, there
would be “every reason for the Russian Federation to take tough actions against
the Estonian state.”
Estonia said it had received no official request for information or cooperation from
Moscow over the attack.

Dugin also blamed Ukraine, and called for revenge. “My daughter laid her maiden life
on her altar. So win, please!” he said in a statement.

Ukraine denied involvement, with presidential adviser, Mykhailo

Podolyak, tweeting that the F.S.B. accusations were “propaganda” from a “fictional
world.” There has been no indication that it could conduct such an audacious
strike so deep inside Russia.

The F.S.B. assertion that it had “solved” the murder came just 36 hours after the
blast and represented extraordinary speed for an agency that still has not figured
out who was behind several high-profile assassinations, including that of
opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in 2015 or the journalist Anna Politkovskaya in
2006.

The agency, which succeeded the Soviet K.G.B., is less a serious law enforcement
agency than a political tool and has long been dogged by suspicions that rather than
solving crimes, it stages or covers them up.

Yulia Latynina, a Russian journalist and Putin critic, suggested that Dugina’s
killing could be a false flag operation intended to justify a campaign of repression
or to temper the increasingly vocal pro-war party that has been turning critical of the
Kremlin.

“This murder can be followed by total terror,” she said in a video on YouTube.