The essentials At the wheel of her father’s car, the Russian political scientist and journalist Daria Dougine died when the machine exploded. According to relatives, it was Alexander Dougin, a defender of the invasion of Ukraine and close to the Kremlin, who was targeted. Investigations are ongoing, but Russian officials are already blaming Ukrainian forces.
On Saturday night, a car bomb attack caused the death of Daria Dougine, the daughter of Alexandre Dougine, a Russian ultra-nationalist ideologue close to the Kremlin. While she was driving her father’s car, the explosive device detonated near Moscow: according to family members, the intellectual was targeted directly, and not his daughter. We take stock of what happened and the first elements of the investigation.
Where did the explosion take place?
The attack happened around 9 p.m. (local time) on Saturday evening near the village of Bolchiye Vyazemy, 40 kilometers southwest of Moscow, according to the Russian Investigative Committee, which is responsible for the main criminal investigation in the country. The victim was driving his father’s car, a Toyota Land Cruiser, when it exploded before catching fire on a highway. “The young woman was reportedly killed at the scene,” the statement said.
According to family members quoted by Russian news agencies, it was ultra-nationalist intellectual and writer Alexander Dougin, 60, who was the target of the blast. When the two had to drive home together from a festival in Dugin, a suburb of the capital, Alexander Dougin decided at the last minute to switch cars, reports Russian government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta (in Russian), quoted by Franceinfo.
Who is Alexander Dougin, Putin’s mastermind?
Alexander Dougin is a far-right intellectual and author, a passionate advocate of the “Eurasian” doctrine, which would make possible a Russian-led Europe-Asia alliance. It has been the target of European Union sanctions since 2014, imposed after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula.
Although he never held an official position in the Kremlin, he has been credited as the architect, even the “spiritual leader” of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Kyiv has also banned several of his works in recent years, including “Ukraine. my war Geopolitical Journal” and “Eurasian Revenge of Russia”.
The influence that Alexander Dougin would exert on the Russian President also earned him the nickname “Putin’s Brain”.
Who was his daughter, victim of the attack?
Daria Dougine, born in 1992, was a journalist and political scientist. As a proponent of Russian ultra-nationalism and Russian imperial expansion, she, like her father, had publicly advocated the invasion of Ukraine. According to information from France Télévisions in Moscow, she had taken part in a press trip to the Donbass organized by the Russian army.
CNN recalls that the United States sanctioned her last March after she published an article on the United World International (UWI) website, of which she was editor-in-chief, suggesting that Ukraine should “go under.” , if it were admitted to NATO. She was on the US-sanctioned “Russian Elite List” in March 2022, following the Russian military invasion of Ukraine.
Where is the investigation?
According to investigators, an explosive device was planted in the vehicle and all indications are that “the act was planned and ordered in advance,” underlines the press release. A preliminary investigation into “homicides” has been initiated, adds the Russian investigative committee. There is every indication that “the crime was planned and ordered in advance,” the committee affirmed.
But already, the reactions of Russian officials in connection with the war in Ukraine are not long in coming for possible sponsors of this attack. The leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), self-proclaimed pro-Russian separatist in eastern Ukraine, Denis Pushilin on Sunday accused Ukrainian forces of being behind the assassination of Daria Dugin. “Terrorists of the Ukrainian regime tried to liquidate Alexander Dugin, but blew up his daughter,” Pushilin said on Telegram.
“If the Ukrainian trail is confirmed and needs to be verified by the relevant authorities, this is a policy of state terrorism by the Kiev regime,” spokeswoman for Russian diplomacy Maria Zakharova commented on Telegram. Kyiv hastened to respond to these allegations: “Ukraine undoubtedly had nothing to do with yesterday’s explosion because we are not a criminal state,” said Ukrainian Presidential Advisor Mikhaïlo Podoliak.