Experts are examining the type of explosive used, the Investigative Committee says
Investigators working on the site of the car blast outside Moscow. © Russia’s Investigative Committee © Russia’s Investigative Committee
A criminal case has been launched over the death of the daughter of prominent Russian philosopher and political commentator Aleksandr Dugin, the Investigative Committee announced on Sunday morning, adding that a car bomb is suspected as the cause.
Darya Dugina, 30, has been officially confirmed as the victim of the explosion outside the Russian capital, the agency said in a statement.
According to investigators, a blast ripped through her Toyota Land Cruiser at around 9pm local time on Saturday as she was driving near the village of Bolshie Vyazemy in Moscow Region.
It is thought an explosive device detonated inside the vehicle, which then caught fire. “The female driver, who was behind the wheel, has been killed on site,” the Investigative Committee said.
A journalist and political commentator, Dugina was the daughter of philosopher Aleksandr Dugin, who is often painted in the West as the ideologist of President Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy over the past decade.
However, in Russia, Dugin is viewed as a relatively marginal figure due to his often extreme anti-Western and ‘neo-Eurasian’ views. The 60-year-old has never been officially endorsed by the Kremlin.
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On Saturday, he was giving a lecture at family festival called ‘Tradition’, with his daughter in attendance. Some reports suggest that Dugin initially planned to leave the event in the same car with his daughter, but later changed his plans.
Russian writer and political activist Zakhar Prilepin, who also attended the festival, hinted that Ukraine could be behind the bombing.
“They do things like this. They’ve crossed the line long ago,” he wrote on Telegram, noting the assassination of the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Aleksandr Zakharchenko, in 2018, which was blamed on Kiev, and other high-profile bomb attacks in Donbass in recent years.
“This comedy idol, this sleepy man in a T-shirt – he greenlights such actions,” Prilepin said in an apparent reference to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, who was a comedian before turning to politics.
Judging from his post, the writer believes that Dugin, not his daughter, was the real target of the attackers. No evidence of Kiev’s role in the bombing has been made public so far.
