Ukraine’s secret service was responsible for a car explosion that killed the daughter of one of president Vladimir Putin’s closest allies, Russia has claimed.
Darya Dugina, daughter of prominent nationalist ideologue Aleksandr Dugin, died on Saturday when a suspected explosive device detonated in the car she was driving near Moscow.
The FSB, Russia’s federal security service, claimed – without providing clear evidence – that the attack was carried out by a Ukrainian woman born in 1979.
It said the woman and her teenage daughter had arrived in Russia in July and spent a month preparing the attack by renting an apartment in the same housing block and researching Ms Dugina's lifestyle.
The alleged assailant had attended an event outside Moscow on Saturday evening that was also attended by Ms Dugina, 29, and her father, before carrying out a “controlled explosion” of Ms Dugina’s car and fleeing Russia to Estonia, the FSB was quoted as saying.
Kyiv did not immediately respond to the FSB statement and has previously denied any involvement.
Aleksandr Dugin 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.
Ms Dugina, who appeared regularly on Russian state TV as a journalist, broadly endorsed her father’s ideas and was a supporter of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls its “special military operation”.
Mr Dugin’s influence in Russia and proximity to Mr Putin have been the subject of speculation.
Some Russia watchers ascribe to him significant sway over Moscow’s foreign policy and say he helped lay the intellectual groundwork for Mr Putin to adopt a more aggressive and expansionist foreign policy.
Others have said his impact and influence are minimal. The 60-year-old has never held an official Kremlin role.
Meanwhile, the chair of the UK’s foreign affairs committee, Tom Tugendhat, said yesterdday: “In recent months, Dugin had been criticising the Kremlin for being too soft.
“Given the terrorism used by Putin over decades – Beslan, Nemtsov, Litvinenko, to name but a few incidents – means the list of suspects should include his own government.”
Mr Dugin did not respond to questions emailed to him on Sunday at an address listed on the website of the International Eurasian Movement, which he founded.
Fierce fighting continues in the south and Donbas region of Ukraine as the war approaches month six.
Russian shelling across the river from Ukraine’s main nuclear power plant wounded four people yesterday, an official said, hours after the latest international pleas to spare the area from attacks to prevent a catastrophe.
The city of Nikopol, about 10km (six miles) downstream from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, came under fire three times overnight from rockets and mortar shells. Houses, a kindergarten, a bus station and stores were hit, authorities said.
Mayor Oleksandr Saiuk said four people were wounded and two of them were hospitalised.
The reports of sustained shelling around Europe’s biggest nuclear plant further highlighted the dangers of a war that will hit the half-year mark on Wednesday.
After UN secretary general Antonio Guterres urged caution during a visit to Ukraine last week, US president Joe Biden discussed the issue with the leaders of France, Germany and Britain on Sunday.
The four leaders stressed the need to avoid military operations in the region to prevent a nuclear disaster and called for the UN’s atomic energy agency to be allowed to visit the plant as soon as possible.
Russia’s parliament said it would hold a special meeting on Thursday to discuss the situation around the Zaporizhzhia plant, which is in eastern Ukraine.
In an official statement published yesterday, the parliament said a session of the council of the state duma would be held on 25 August to discuss “the threat to the safety of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant”.
