Russia accuses Ukraine of killing ultra-nationalist’s daughter

Russia has accused Ukraine’s secret services of killing Darya Dugina, the daughter of a Russian ultra-nationalist ideologue.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said Dugina was killed on Saturday evening when a suspected explosive device blew up the Toyota Land Cruiser she was driving.

Alexander Dugin, Darya’s father, is an ultra-nationalist ideologue who has advocated violence to achieve the unification of Russian-speaking and other territories in a vast new Russian empire.

The FSB said in a statement on Monday that its suspect was a female Ukrainian citizen born in 1979, who arrived in Russia in late July with her teenage daughter.

It alleged that the woman spent a month planning the attack by moving into a flat near Dugina in order to study her lifestyle.

Also Read: Putin Warns the West Ukraine ‘Heading for Tragedy’

The assailant had attended an event outside Moscow on Saturday evening which Dugina and her father were also at, before carrying out a “controlled explosion” of Dugina’s car, and fleeing Russia to Estonia, the FSB was quoted as saying.

Darya, who appeared regularly on Russian state TV, broadly endorsed her father’s ideas and was a supporter of what Russia calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine, which Kyiv and the West cast as an imperial-style war of conquest.

Ukraine has denied any involvement in Darya Dugina’s death.

Zainab Sa’id