Who Killed Darya Dugina?

Darya Dugina was the daughter of Alexander Dugin, one of Vladimir Putin’s close associates, a leading pro-Putin intellectual, and a vigorous supporter of the Ukraine invasion. Dugin is an exponent of “Eurasianism,” arguing that Russia is a unique civilization that has rejected Western liberalism and is the heir to the Russian Empire. Darya herself was a journalist and a supporter of her father’s ideas and Putin’s regime. On Saturday night, Darya was killed when a bomb went off under the seat of her Toyota SUV, igniting a fire and blowing her to pieces.

It was widely assumed that the intended target of the assassination was Alexander Dugin. Dugin had been with his daughter shortly before, and it is reported that the car she was driving was his. The Russian government naturally, and understandably, claimed that Ukrainian saboteurs were behind the assassination. In short order, the Russians even came up with a suspect: one Natalya Vovk. The Telegraph reports:

A mother serving in the Ukrainian army slipped into Moscow to assassinate a pro-war journalist before escaping to Estonia in a Mini Cooper, Russia’s FSB security service claimed on Monday.

Russian officials said Natalya Vovk brought her 12-year-old daughter to the capital to help her stake out Daria Dugina, 29, who was killed by a bomb planted under the seat of her car on Saturday evening.

The FSB released a passport photo of Vovk alongside a video purporting to show her in Moscow. Pro-Kremlin websites claimed she was part of the nationalist Azov regiment, which Russia accuses of “Nazism”.

This is supposedly a photo of Natalya Vovk in Moscow:

The Telegraph:

The FSB released video of a woman driving a Mini Cooper in Moscow and entering the apartment block where Vovk was said to have stayed. It was unclear if the woman in the video, who wore sunglasses in one section, was the same person in the passport photo.

Ukraine denies any involvement in the assassination. It expressed concern, no doubt well-founded, that Vovk’s murder will be used as a pretext for more barbarities by the Russian regime, in particular against captured Azov soldiers who are about to go on trial.

But there are other possibilities. A a former Russian opponent of Putin says that Russian nationalists were behind the bombing:

Russian resistance fighters were behind the car bombing that killed the daughter of an ultra-nationalist philosopher who had backed the invasion of Ukraine, a former Russian opposition MP has said.

Ilya Ponomarev, who fled to Ukraine after opposing the Kremlin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, said a group of Russian partisan fighters known as the National Republican Army (NRA) had claimed responsibility for the bombing.
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…Ponomarev said the NRA fighters were responsible. He said the group had carried out about a dozen arson attacks on military recruitment centres across Russia.

“This act, like many other partisan actions carried out on the territory of Russia in recent months, was carried out by the NRA,” Ponomarev, 47, said during a broadcast by February Morning, his Kyiv-based media outlet. “This attack opens a new page in Russian resistance to Putinism. New — but not the last.”
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It was impossible to verify Ponomarev’s claims about the existence of the NRA.

Much may hinge on who killed Darya Dugina, or who is believed to have done so. If the deed was carried out by dissident Russian nationalists, more such attacks should be in the offing. If Ukraine is believed to be responsible, it will fuel Russia’s war effort:

Dugin, whose ultranationalist writings Putin has cited, said his “beautiful, orthodox” daughter was assassinated before his eyes.

“We only need our victory. My daughter sacrificed her young woman’s life to its altar. So please, achieve it!” he said.

Worse, it will be used to justify atrocities carried out, ostensibly, in retribution.

The end game of the Ukraine invasion has been murky for a while. The killing of Darya Dugina may have made it murkier.