On Monday, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed to have solved the assassination of Russian journalist Darya Dugina, asserting that the Ukrainian special services had “prepared and committed” the crime.
Dugina, who was the daughter of prominent Russian ultranationalist ideologue and Putin ally Alexander Dugin, was killed in a car bombing near Moscow on Saturday night while returning from a literary and music festival. Her family members believe that her father was the intended target, who was also present at the festival and had changed cars at the last minute.
Wikipedia tells that in her ID she was wearing wrong type of uniform, not multicam Azov’s been always using, but the uniform ordinary Nat Guard wears, her ID was no longer valid due to change of marital status. 2/
— Myroslava Petsa (@myroslavapetsa) August 22, 2022
The FSB revealed that a 43-year-old Ukrainian woman named Natalya Vovk, supposedly belonging to the Azov regiment, was responsible for carrying out the remote-controlled explosion. They said she left the country through the Pskov region to Estonia, along with her 12-year-old daughter Sofia Shaban after the killing.
According to the FSB, Vovk rented an apartment in the same housing block as Dugina “to obtain information about her lifestyle” and used a Mini Cooper to “observe” her. The FSB released her military identity card and a video showing her entering Russia on July 23 with her daughter in the alleged car, which had Donetsk car license plates. Vovk also changed the car license numbers twice—used Kazakh numbers in Moscow, and later a Ukrainian license number while leaving the country after the killing.
Ru-propaganda lives in a fictional world: 🇺🇦 woman and her 12-year-old child were "assigned" responsible for blowing up the car of propagandist Dugina. Surprisingly, they did not find the "Estonian visa" on the spot. Vipers in 🇷🇺 special services started an intraspecies fight.
— Михайло Подоляк (@Podolyak_M) August 22, 2022
Ukraine has rejected the FSB’s claims, saying that it is “not a criminal state, like the Russian Federation is, and moreover not a terrorist state.” Presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak asserted that Russian “propaganda lives in a fictional world,” claiming that Dugina’s murder could be an inside job. “Vipers in Russian special services started an intraspecies fight,” he tweeted. Moreover, the Azov regiment has said that Vovk has “nothing to do” with the regiment and “never belonged to our division.”
United States (US) Department of State spokesperson Ned Price also affirmed that “Ukraine has denied any involvement in the attack” while condemning Dugina’s murder “unequivocally.” “I have no doubt that the Russians will investigate this. I also have no doubt that the Russians will put forward certain conclusions,” he noted.
Russian MP Leonid Slutsky is taking a similar line, as he calls her death an attack on the Russkiy Mir ideology but does not blame Ukraine explicitly
— Samuel Ramani (@SamRamani2) August 21, 2022
The Russian Foreign Ministry took a harder line than the Duma on blaming Ukraine, which reflects its information warfare role
Russia has also put Vovk on the wanted list and demanded her extradition from Estonia. “If Estonia refuses to extradite the perpetrator Natalia Vovk to Russia—and there is little doubt that it will—we will have all the grounds for tough measures against Estonia as a state sheltering a terrorist,” Vladimir Dzhabarov, the first deputy chairman of the international committee of Russia’s Federation Council (the upper house of parliament), wrote on Telegram.
In response, Estonian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Liisa Toots said, “We can share information about the individuals entering or leaving Estonia only in cases prescribed by law,” adding, “Russian FSB’s accusation, which reached us through Kremlin’s propaganda channel, is not one of them.”
This (from Thursday) is Darya Dugina's final appearance on state TV before her death last night
— Francis Scarr (@francis_scarr) August 21, 2022
A chip off the old block, as they say pic.twitter.com/qXkyXzwZks
Soon after the FSB released its statement regarding his daughter’s killing, Dugin called her death a “terrorist attack carried out by the Nazi Ukrainian regime.” Hoping that her murder may “inspire” the Russian forces, he stated, “Our hearts yearn for more than just revenge or retribution. It’s too petty, not Russian. We only need our Victory. My daughter laid her maiden life on her altar. So win, please!”
In a similar vein, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova noted that Kyiv uses “terrorism as a tool for the implementation of a criminal ideology.”
Russians doing their best to prove that the killing of Darya Dugina was a pretext for them to escalate their war crimes in Ukraine. https://t.co/3sO5n3YaDo
— Ben Rhodes (@brhodes) August 23, 2022
However, the speedily-conducted investigation raised concern among a few Russian opposition members. Ilya Ponomaryov, a former Russian Member of Parliament (MP) living in exile in Kyiv, for example, claimed that a Russian militant group called the National Republican Army was responsible for the murder. According to their manifesto, the group wants to depose Russian President Vladimir Putin and build a new Russia.
On the other hand, some Ukrainian officials believe that Dugina’s death could serve as a “false flag” attack conducted to frame Ukraine and be used as a pretext to intensify attacks on Ukraine.
In Dugin's world, Russia's destiny "will not be complete until we unite all the eastern Slavs and all the Eurasian brothers into one big space. Everything follows from this logic of destiny -- and so does Ukraine." https://t.co/IwDYlfgagw
— Iuliia Mendel (@IuliiaMendel) August 21, 2022
Meanwhile, Putin awarded Dugina with the prestigious Order of Courage posthumously for her “courage and dedication while performing her professional duty.” While expressing his condolences to Dugin, Putin called her a “patriot of Russia” who died because of a “vile, cruel crime.”
Dugina was a firm supporter of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and was sanctioned by the United Kingdom (UK) in July for being “a frequent and high-profile contributor of disinformation in relation to Ukraine.” She also shared her father’s anti-Western and ultra-nationalist beliefs. Dugin has been described as one of the founders of Russia’s anti-European movement and told BBC back in 2014 that the Ukraine war was “inevitable” and also supported the annexation of Crimea that year.