Car blast kills daughter of Russian often called ‘Putin’s mind’

The daughter of a Russian nationalist ideologist who’s also known as “Putin’s brain” was killed when her automotive exploded on the outskirts of Moscow, officers stated Sunday.

The Investigative Committee department for the Moscow area stated the Saturday night time blast was attributable to a bomb planted within the SUV pushed by Daria Dugina.

The 29-year-old was the daughter of political theorist Alexander Dugin, a outstanding proponent of the “Russian world” idea and a vehement supporter of Russia’s sending of troops into Ukraine.

In this handout photograph taken from video launched by Investigative Committee of Russia on Sunday, Aug. 21, 2022, investigators work on the location of explosion of a automotive pushed by Daria Dugina exterior Moscow. (Investigative Committee of Russia by way of AP)

Dugin’s precise ties to President Vladimir Putin are unclear, however the Kremlin often echoes rhetoric from his writings and appearances on Russian state TV. He helped popularize the idea of “Novorossiya” (New Russia) that Russia used to justify the annexation of Crimea and its assist of separatist rebels in jap Ukraine.

He promotes Russia as a rustic of piety, conventional values and authoritarian management, and disdains Western liberal values.

Dugina expressed related views and had appeared as a commentator on the nationalist TV channel Tsargrad.

She was sanctioned by the United States in March for her work as chief editor of United World International, a web site that the U.S. described as a disinformation website. The sanctions announcement cited a UWI article this 12 months that contended Ukraine would “perish” if it have been admitted to NATO.

“Dasha, like her father, has always been at the forefront of confrontation with the West,” Tsargrad stated on Sunday, utilizing the acquainted type of her identify.

The explosion happened as Dugina was coming back from a cultural pageant she had attended along with her father. Some Russian media stories cited witnesses as saying the automobile belonged to her father and that he had determined on the final minute to journey in one other automotive.

The vivid and violent incident, uncommon for Moscow, is prone to irritate Russia-Ukraine animosity.

No suspects have been instantly recognized. But Denis Pushilin, president of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic that could be a focus of Russia’s preventing in Ukraine, blamed it on “terrorists of the Ukrainian regime, trying to kill Alexander Dugin.”

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, denied Ukrainian involvement, saying on nationwide TV that “We are not a criminal state, unlike Russia, and definitely not a terrorist state.”

Analyst Sergei Markov, a former Putin adviser, informed Russian state information company RIA-Novosti that Alexander Dugin, not his daughter, possible was the supposed goal and stated “it’s completely obvious that the most probable suspects are Ukrainian military intelligence and the Ukrainian Security Service.”