A hardline Russian ideologue and an ally to President Vladimir Putin, Alexander Dugin’s daughter has been killed in a suspected car bombing on Moscow’s outskirts, authorities said on Sunday.
As per the family members, Dugin-a vocal supporter of the Kremlin’s offensive in Ukraine was the likely target of the blast as his daughter borrowed his car at the very last minute.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Investigative Committee mentioned in a statement, that Daria Dugina, who was born in 1992, died when a bomb placed in her Toyota Land Cruiser went off as she was driving on an expressway near the village of Bolshie Vyzyomy, some 40 kilometres (25 miles) outside Moscow.
Dugina died on the spot and homicide probe has been opened, as stated by the Committee, which investigates significant cases in Russia. Dugin, sometimes called “Putin’s Rasputin” or “Putin’s brain,” is an outspoken Russian ultranationalist intellectual.
He has long advocated the unification of Russian-speaking territories in a vast new Russian empire and wholeheartedly supported Moscow’s operation in Ukraine.
He was put on a Western sanctions list after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, a move he also backed.
The head of one of Ukraine’s breakaway separatist regions blamed the blast on Kyiv authorities.
“The Ukrainian regime terrorists tried to liquidate Alexander Dugin, but blew up his daughter,” DNR chief Denis Pushilin wrote on Telegram.