By JIM HEINTZ
MOSCOW (AP) — The daughter of an influential Russian political theorist also known as “Putin’s mind” was killed in a automobile bombing on the outskirts of Moscow, authorities mentioned Sunday.
The Moscow department of the Russian Investigative Committee mentioned preliminary data indicated 29-year-old TV commentator Daria Dugina was killed by an explosive planted within the SUV she was driving Saturday night time.
There was no speedy declare of accountability. However the bloodshed gave rise to suspicions that the meant goal was her father, Alexander Dugin, a nationalist thinker and author.
Dugin is a distinguished proponent of the “Russian world” idea, a non secular and political ideology that emphasizes conventional values, restoration of Russia’s energy and the unity of all ethnic Russians all through the world. He's additionally a vehement supporter of Russia’s sending of troops into Ukraine.
The explosion happened as his daughter was coming back from a cultural competition she had attended with him. Some Russian media reviews cited witnesses as saying that the SUV belonged to Dugin and that he had determined on the final minute to journey in one other car.
The vivid act of violence, uncommon for Moscow, is prone to irritate tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
Denis Pushilin, president of the separatist Donetsk Individuals’s Republic, the pro-Moscow area that may be a focus of Russia’s combating in Ukraine, blamed it on “terrorists of the Ukrainian regime, making an attempt to kill Alexander Dugin.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, denied Ukrainian involvement, saying, “We're not a prison state, in contrast to Russia, and positively not a terrorist state.”
Analyst Sergei Markov, a former Putin adviser, instructed the Russian state information company RIA-Novosti that Dugin, not his daughter, was most likely the meant goal and mentioned, “It’s fully apparent that probably the most possible suspects are Ukrainian navy intelligence and the Ukrainian Safety Service.”
Whereas Dugin’s actual ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin are unclear, the Kremlin regularly echoes rhetoric from his writings and appearances on Russian state TV. He helped popularize the “Novorossiya,” or New Russia, idea that Russia used to justify the 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and its assist of separatist rebels in jap Ukraine.
He promotes Russia as a rustic of piety, conventional values and authoritarian management, and disdains Western liberal values.
His daughter expressed comparable views and had appeared as a commentator on the nationalist TV channel Tsargrad, the place Dugin had served as chief editor.
Dugina herself was sanctioned by the USA in March for her work as chief editor of United World Worldwide, a web site that the U.S. described as a disinformation supply. The sanctions announcement cited a United World article this 12 months that contended Ukraine would “perish” if it had been admitted to NATO.
Dugina, “like her father, has all the time been on the forefront of confrontation with the West,” Tsargrad mentioned on Sunday.