Kremlin’s wild claims over ‘truth’ behind Darya Dugina assassination

Russia’s top spy agency has made some extraordinary claims over who was behind a recent assassination in Moscow.

Aleander Dugin with daughter Darya Dugina who Russia claims was assassinated by a Ukraine female assassin – which Kyiv denies.

Russia’s top security agency has claimed it has cracked the case of who killed propagandist Darya Dugina – and it reads like something out of a spy thriller.

The Federal Security Service (FSB) was quick to blame Ukraine when Dugina, 29, was killed on August 21 in a fiery car bomb attack in Moscow – an accusation Kyiv, was just as quick to deny.

Back then it was assumed the bomb was meant for her father, a loyalist to Russian President Vladimir Putin who has both been dubbed “Putin’s Rasputin” and credited with being the architect of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

But information released by the FSB now indicates that his daughter may have been the intended target of the attack.

The spy agency claimed to have evidence that, on orders from Kyiv, a mother who was serving in the Ukrainian National Guard’s Azov regiment had quietly slipped into Moscow.

The Azov regiment gained global attention after its stand to fight for the city of Mariupol; it has also been labelled a “terrorist” unit by the Kremlin.

Investigators collect evidence from after the explosion which killed Darya Dugina. Picture: Handout/Investigative Committee of Russia/AFP

After crossing the Russian border with dyed hair and using false number plates on her Mini Cooper, the FSB claimed the woman and her 12-year-old daughter spent a month following Dugina, ABC reports.

“In order to organise Dugina’s murder and obtain information about her lifestyle, [she] and her daughter rented an apartment in Moscow in the block where the deceased lived,” the FSB claimed in a statement.

This allegedly gave the woman time to study Dugina’s habits, FSB claimed, before planting the bomb under the driver’s seat of her four-wheel drive.

Dugina had just attended a music festival with her father when the bomb went off.

Unverified footage showed a man, reportedly Mr Dugin, holding his head as he staggered past the debris after the explosion.

Unverified footage of the explosion showed a man, reportedly Mr Dugin, holding his head among the debris.

The FSB said the device was detonated remotely before the suspected assassin fled the country.

“After a controlled explosion of a Toyota Land Cruiser Prado car driven by Dugina, on August 21, [the woman] and her daughter left through the Pskov region to Estonia,” the FSB said.

Russian news outlets claim the woman and her daughter were last spotted checking into a hotel in Austria before the trail went cold.

But Russian critics have blasted the statement, saying none of it makes any sense.

A new target

When the news of the assassination first broke, it was immediately assumed the bomb was meant for Alexander Dugin, the 60-year-old Russian ideologue who was known as “Putin’s brain”.

But his daughter was a target in her own right.

A well-known propagandist, journalist, and political activist, she was the chief editor of United World International (UWI), an English and Turkish language “disinformation” website which is reportedly owned by Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin.

Russian propagandist Darya Dugina was killed in a car-bomb attack outside Moscow.

Back when Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, Dugina wrote on her Telegram channel: “Last night I was walking down a deserted Moscow street and saw a Russian flag flying in the distance. Something whispered, ‘The Russians are coming.’ A woman’s intuition is mighty. There is a reason I noticed that quiet and that flag. In my mind I heard the slogan, ‘Empire, be!’ When I woke up, the empire had come into being.”

At a memorial for his daughter, Mr Dugin called her a “rising star at the start of her journey”.

“She died for Russia, for the people,” he said.

The Russian President himself praised Dugina in the aftermath of her death.

“She was a journalist, scientist, philosopher, war correspondent, she honestly served the people, the fatherland, she proved by deed what it means to be a patriot of Russia,” Mr Putin said.

Alexander Dugin at a farewell ceremony for her daughter Darya Dugina. Picture: Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP

Ukraine denies any involvement

For someone who worked in propaganda, it seems Dugina’s death is equally shrouded in propaganda as Kyiv denied having anything to do with the assassination, labelling it part of Russia’s “fictional world”.

“This is definitely not our responsibility,” Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said.

He was backed up by his National Security and Defence Council secretary Oleksiy Danilov.

“We don’t work in this way,” Mr Danilov said, reported the BBC.

“We have more important tasks for our boys and girls … The FSB did this and is now suggesting that one of our people did it,” Mr Danilov told Ukrainian TV.

National Security and Defence Council Secretary Oleksiy Danilov (left) said: ‘We have more important tasks for our boys and girls.’ Picture: Genya Savilov/AFP

He also claimed the Kremlin had been planning a series of attacks inside Russia to blame on Ukraine in an attempt to garner support for the military action, which has reportedly been waning.

Ukrainian presidential office adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, said Russian “propaganda lives in a fictional world”.

Ukraine’s Azov regiment also came forward to say the suspected assassin has never served in its ranks, and in fact it is, and always has been, a men-only unit.

And Estonia, where the alleged female assassin reportedly escaped to, has said no one matching the FSB’s description passed through its borders, adding it hasn’t had a single request from Russian authorities for any information regarding such a person.