Ukraine has denied any involvement in Dugina’s murder, calling the FSB’s claims fictitious. “We have nothing to do with the killing of this lady — this is the work of Russian special services,” Oleksii Danylov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security Council, said in an interview on Ukrainian television on Monday. “I emphasize once again that our special services have nothing to do with this,” he said. Dugina, the editor of a Russian disinformation website, died when a car bomb she was driving exploded on the outskirts of Moscow on Saturday night. The FSB said the attacker was a Ukrainian woman who arrived in Russia on July 23 with her young daughter, TASS reported. The couple attended a festival on Saturday near Moscow, where Dugina was the guest of honor. “The criminals used a Mini Cooper car to follow the journalist,” TASS reported, citing the FSB, adding that the woman had rented an apartment in Moscow in the same building where Dugina lived. After remotely detonating explosives planted in Dugina’s Toyota Land Cruiser Prado, the FSB said the woman and her daughter drove to the Pskov region in Estonia, about a 12-hour journey. CNN cannot independently verify the FSB claims cited in the TASS report. Estonia’s Police and Border Guard said on Monday that it only shares information on cross-border movements “in cases prescribed by law” and not because of Russian media accusations.
The agency’s media spokesman Ragne Keisk also told CNN in an email that the border force “had not received any official information or request from the Russian authorities regarding this matter.” Estonia’s foreign ministry said it could not comment and referred inquiries to the country’s justice ministry and border guard. Mykhailo Podolyak, a key adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said on Monday that the FSB indictment reflected the “fantasy world” in which Russian propaganda thrives. “Ru-propaganda lives in a fantasy world: [Ukrainian] woman and her 12-year-old child were “assigned” to be responsible for blowing up the propagandist Dugina’s car. Surprisingly, they did not find the ‘Estonian visa’ on site,” he said on Twitter. Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Service spokesman Andriy Yusov also dismissed Russia’s claims on Monday as “false.” “It is false that Ukraine is involved in this. It is false that the National Guard of Ukraine is involved in these events. The National Guard is performing its legal duties on the territory of Ukraine,” Yusov said in a statement. Yusov then shifted the blame for the explosion to Russia, saying: “This is more like settling things inside Russia. Both Dugin and his daughter are marginal characters and are not a point of interest for Ukraine.” Dugina’s father, Alexander Dugin, is a prominent Russian nationalist who is credited with being the architect or “mastermind” of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Both father and daughter have been punished by the United States and the United Kingdom for acting to destabilize Ukraine. The US Treasury Department sanctioned Dugina in March as editor-in-chief of the disinformation website United World International, which it claimed was owned by Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin and sent messages that Ukraine would be “exterminated” if it were admitted to NATO. Prigozhin, known as “Putin’s chef”, is believed to be behind the Internet Research Agency (IRA), the notorious Kremlin-linked troll factory accused of meddling in the 2016 US election. The United Kingdom, in a July filing by the Office of Economic Sanctions Enforcement, called Dugina “a frequent and high-profile contributor of disinformation regarding Ukraine and the Russian invasion of Ukraine on various online platforms.” Putin on Monday sent his condolences to Dugina’s family, calling her death “a heinous, cruel crime.” In a statement posted on the Kremlin’s Telegram channel, Putin said: “Journalist, scientist, philosopher, war correspondent, she honestly served the people, the Motherland, proved by her actions what it means to be a patriot of Russia.” CNN’s Oleksandra Ochman, Tele Rebane and Victoria Butenko contributed to this report.