Nationalist commentator Daria Dugin, 29, was killed on Saturday when a bomb exploded under the driver’s seat of a vehicle belonging to her father, Alexander Dugin, a far-right ideologue. Dugin, who has long campaigned for Moscow to rebuild its empire, joined other prominent nationalists in demanding retaliation against Ukraine. Some also called for retaliation against Estonia, the Baltic nation that has been one of Kiev’s strongest supporters in Europe. Ukraine has denied any involvement in the attack. Officials said Russia had staged it as a pretext for what Kyiv fears could be a major offensive ahead of the country’s independence day on Wednesday, which will also mark six months since the Russian invasion. Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the accusations came from a “fantasy world” and claimed that “vipers in Russian special services started a race between species”. The FSB said a 43-year-old Ukrainian woman named Natalya Vovk was responsible for the murder. She said she entered Russia on July 23 with her 12-year-old daughter, claiming to have rented an apartment in Dugina’s building in Moscow, and followed her in a Mini Cooper, regularly changing its license plates. Vladimir Dzabarov, a senior official in the upper house of the Russian parliament, called on Estonia to hand over the alleged suspect. “If Estonia refuses to extradite criminal Natalya Vovk to Russia. . . there is every reason for Russia to take tough measures against the Estonian state that harbors the terrorist,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app. Margarita Simonyan, editor of the Kremlin-funded RT news channel, where Dugina was a frequent guest, suggested that Russia should find “professionals who want to take the boats to the suburbs of Tallinn.” The comment was a reference to Simonian’s infamous interview with suspects in the 2018 poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal in UK’s Salisbury Cathedral, for which Russia has always denied responsibility. Estonian police said Russia had made no formal request for Vovk. Investigators examine the road to the car bomb scene © Investigative Committee of Russia/AFP/Getty Images Putin condemned the killing as a “despicable, cruel crime” and said the young woman “sincerely served the people, the Motherland and proved by her actions what it means to be a patriot of Russia.” The FSB alleged that Vovk and her daughter followed Dugina to a festival of “traditional values” where the elder Dugin gave a lecture and then fled over the land border to Estonia. He posted video of what he said was Vovk driving to Russia with her daughter in the Mini, driving it to Moscow, entering Dugina’s apartment building and leaving Russia for Estonia on Sunday. The FSB has not released any evidence linking Vovk to the car bomb blast or showing her anywhere near the festival. The FSB’s claims have not been independently verified and the Financial Times could not reach Vovk for comment. Konstantin Malofeyev, a hardline pro-Kremlin tycoon who funds a channel where both father and daughter appeared regularly, released a statement by Dugin calling for retaliation against Ukraine. “Our hearts do not simply thirst for revenge or revenge. This is very trivial, it is not the Russian way. We only need our Victory,” he wrote. “My daughter left her virgin life at her altar. So please win!” But Ilya Ponomarev, a former Russian lawmaker who was later expelled from parliament for opposing Putin and now lives in Kyiv, said he was in contact with a Russian rebel group that claimed responsibility for the attack. Speaking on YouTube on Sunday night, Ponomarev said Russian rebels from a group called the National Republican Army were behind the attack. In the video he provided no evidence for his claim beyond reading what he said was the group’s manifesto and a short video of a man in combat fatigues, dark glasses and a scarf hiding his face. In a phone interview with the FT Ponomarev said the rebels were a loose group of “very radical young people in Russia. . . who have been training and preparing for some time.” He insisted that they, and not Vovk, were behind the attack.
