The daughter of Alexander Dugin, a Russian ideologue close to the Kremlin, died on Saturday when the car he was driving exploded near Moscow, the Russian Investigative Committee reported on Sunday.
At the time of the explosion, Daria Duguina, a journalist and political scientist and defender of the Russian offensive in Ukrainecirculated near the town of Bolshie Viaziomy, about 40 km from Moscow.
He was driving a Toyota Land Cruiser, the statement said.
The detonation was due to an explosive device placed in the vehicle, and everything indicates that "the crime was planned and commissioned"the researchers noted.
The young woman, born in 1992, "died on the spot" of the explosionspecified the Committee, which is in charge of criminal investigations in Russia and opened an investigation for "homicide".
The target of the attack was Alexander Duguinindicated people close to the family, quoted by the Russian press agencies, since, according to what they explained, Daria Duguina borrowed her father’s car at the last minute.
Alexander Duguin, a 60-year-old ultra-nationalist intellectual and writer, theorist of neo-Eurasianism, an alliance between Europe and Asia led by Russia, has been subject to European Union sanctions since 2014, after the Russian annexation of Crimea.
Duginsometimes called "Putin’s brain" or the "Putin’s Rasputin"is a figure who has been advocating the unification of the Russian-speaking territories for years, and fully supported the military operation launched by Moscow in Ukraine in February.
In recent years Ukraine has banned several of his books, in particular "Ukraine. my war geopolitical diary" Y "Russia’s Eurasian Revenge".
In turn, Daria Duguina appeared since July on a list of Russian citizens sanctioned in the United Kingdom for allegedly spreading on the Internet "misinformation about Ukraine".
So far no one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
The leader of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), self-proclaimed by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, Denis Pushilin, accused Ukrainian forces of the murder of Daria Duguina on Sunday.
"The terrorists of the Ukrainian regime tried to liquidate Alexander Dugin, but they killed his daughter"Pushilin stated on his Telegram account.
Similarly, the spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zajárova, wrote on Telegram that "if the Ukrainian trail is confirmed (…) and that will have to be verified by the competent authorities, we will be talking about state terrorism by the kyiv regime".