© Social MediaDarya Dugina was killed in a car bombing on the outskirts of Moscow.
A car belonging to the daughter of famous Russian political scientist and philosopher Alexander Dugin exploded late Saturday in Moscow, according to media reports.
Darya Dugina's
car exploded on Mozhayskoye highway around 9.45 p.m. local time, with witnesses claiming the blast rocked the vehicle in the middle of the road and scattered debris.
Preliminary reports said she died instantly.
The elder Dugin has arrived at the scene, according to a video on social media.
© nvestigative committee Of Russia/ReutersInvestigators work at the site of the suspected car bomb attack that killed Darya Dugina on the outskirts of Moscow.
It is unclear if the explosion was an assassination attempt targeting her father, who has been described as the "brain" of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Darya Dugina,
like her father, was engaged in journalism, philosophy and political science.
Comment: The Guardian reports:
Witnesses said debris was thrown all over the road as the car was engulfed in flames before crashing into a fence.
"An explosive device allegedly installed in a Toyota Land Cruiser car went off at full speed on a public highway, and then the car caught fire," investigators wrote in their report of the incident. "The female driver died on the spot. The identity of the deceased has been established: it is the journalist and political scientist Darya Dugina."
Andrey Krasnov, a friend of Dugina and the head of the Russian Horizon social movement, confirmed the reports, according to the news agency Tass.
He said the bomb could have been intended for her father.
"This was the father's vehicle. Darya was driving another car but she took his car today, while Alexander went in a different way. He returned, he was at the site of the tragedy. As far as I understand, Alexander or probably they together were the target," Krasnov said.
The media outlet 112 reported that Dugin and his daughter had been at an event outside Moscow and had been due to travel back together until he decided to go separately at the last minute.
Footage on social media appeared to show him at the scene in a state of distress.
© Francesca Ebel/APAlexander Dugin.
The head of the self-proclaimed, Russian-controlled Donetsk People's Republic, Denis Pushilin, wrote on his Telegram channel that Dugina had been killed and blamed the Ukrainian government.
"Vile villains! The terrorists of the Ukrainian regime, trying to eliminate Alexander Dugin, blew up his daughter ... In a car. Blessed memory of Daria, she is a real Russian girl!"
Investigators said they had opened a murder case and would be carrying out forensic examinations to try to determine exactly what had happened. They said they were considering "all versions" when it came to working out who was responsible.
The influence of Dugin over Putin has been a subject for speculation, with some Russia watchers asserting that his sway is significant and others calling it minimal.
Dugin and his daughter have been sanctioned by the UK and US for acting to destabilise Ukraine. In its filing, the UK Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation called Dugina a "frequent and high-profile contributor of disinformation in relation to Ukraine and the Russian invasion of Ukraine on various online platforms".
The US Treasury sanctioned her as the chief editor for the website United World International, which it claimed was owned by the Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin.
TASS reports:
Investigators have opened a criminal case
The press service added that at the moment, forensic experts, investigators and experts in explosive engineering continue to inspect the incident site. "Based on the results of the inspection, a number of examinations will be appointed, including forensic, explosive engineering and molecular-genetic. All possible versions of the crime are being probed into," the press service noted.
Darya Dugina was born in 1992. She graduated from the Philosophy Department of Lomonosov Moscow State University. She was a PhD.
RT reports:
A journalist and political commentator, Platonova 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.
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.
Political analysis Andrew Korybko provides his
analysis on the incident:
The Assassination Of Alexander Dugin's Daughter Darya Was A Dastardly Terrorist Attack
Darya's assassination represents a crossing of the Rubicon in the Ukrainian Conflict whereby Kiev has escalated its terrorist attacks to the point of targeting the family members of civilians who they were duped by fake news into falsely thinking are unofficially very influential policymakers like they seem to have believed that her father is. This targeted assassination that was indisputably influenced by half a decade's worth of fake news about that philosopher shows the deadly consequences of America's information warfare campaign.
Darya Dugina, the daughter of Russian philosopher and professor Alexander Dugin, was assassinated Saturday evening when the jeep she was driving exploded on a Moscow highway due to what investigators believe was a bomb that had earlier been placed within it. Suspicion is also swirling that her father was the intended target after sources revealed that he was supposed to have also been in the vehicle but decided to return home from the Tradition and History family festival through alternative means at the very last minute. Although no related evidence has yet to be made public, many are beginning to believe that Kiev was behind this dastardly terrorist attack.
Professor Dugin is perhaps the second most "infamous" Russian behind President Putin in the Western imagination after falsely being accused of being akin to a modern-day version of "Rasputin". According to this artificially manufactured information warfare narrative that's been spun for over the past half-decade already, that philosopher's prior works supposedly convinced the Russian leader to restore his former superpower's influence over the countries that used to comprise the Soviet Union. The reality, however, is that this geostrategic trend was the natural result of his Great Power gradually recovering from its post-Soviet collapse and more confidently defending its national security red lines in Eurasia.
Nevertheless, it serves Western perception managers' narrative interests to concoct a dramatic conspiracy theory in order to more easily manipulate their targeted audience. Instead of purely remaining in the media realm, however, this false interpretation of geostrategic events ultimately had deadly consequences insofar as successfully convincing the Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev that Professor Dugin supposedly constituted a so-called "threat" that they were therefore felt had to be eliminated no matter what, ergo the assassination attempt against him that ended up killing his daughter instead. This sequence of events leads to several very important conclusions.
First, unsubstantiated allegations like those against Professor Dugin can spread like wildfire if they creatively appeal to their targeted audience's imagination. Second, this fake news can have very real consequences if it influences folks to carry out acts of violence against the subject being smeared. Third, civilians like he and his daughter who go about their everyday lives are so-called "soft targets" that can be harmed more easily than government figures because they don't have full-time security services to protect them. Fourth, the Ukrainian intelligence services were obviously monitoring their movements, attempting to penetrate their circles, and thus preparing to strike at a future time.
And fifth, Professor Dugin and his daughter are public figures who accordingly share their event schedules on social media, which in hindsight contributed to this so-called "crime of opportunity" that was planned to be committed through indirect means via the car bomb that was ultimately employed as part of this assassination plot. From this, it can be speculated that the culprit either planted the device while those two were at Saturday's festival or sometime prior, with it being unclear whether it was detonated via a timer that couldn't be stopped (hence why it blew up despite the philosopher changing his plans at the last minute) or if it was manually done to deliberately kill his daughter.
The fact that she was still killed despite their presumably intended target unexpectedly deciding to go home in a different vehicle suggests that the perpetrators still decided to go through with their plot in order to at the very least send a message to him and Moscow more broadly that they've decided to escalate their US-backed Hybrid War on Russia.
It also confirms that the declining unipolar hegemon's proxies in Kiev are truly state sponsors of terrorism who must accordingly be treated as such by the international community. This dastardly terrorist attack threatens the legitimate rules-based order enshrined in the UN Charter and thus confirms that the US is deliberately sowing the seeds of chaos in a desperate last-ditch attempt to erode Russian morale after the slow but steady advance of its forces over the past half-year of its special military operation.
Tens of billions of dollars' worth of US-led Western military equipment to Kiev haven't succeeded in shaping the course of the conflict, which continues to trend in the direction of an inevitable Russian victory despite uncertainty about the exact moment when that outcome will be officially recognized by its opponents. Only the side that's losing would resort to such acts of terrorism since they clearly lack the conventional capabilities to alter on-the-ground events in their favor. Objective observers can therefore conclude that the US-led NATO proxy war on Russia through Ukraine has failed to achieve its grand strategic objective of crippling that Great Power and might thus be in its final conventional stage.
More footage of the incident from Twitter:
Comment: The Guardian reports: TASS reports: RT reports: Political analysis Andrew Korybko provides his analysis on the incident: More footage of the incident from Twitter: