Target was “Putin’s Brain,” but His Daughter Got Killed
NEW DELHI, Aug 21: The daughter of a close associate of the Russian president Vladimir Putin was killed in a car bomb blast, allegedly planted by the Ukrainian ultras, the authorities said on Sunday.
The experts believe the death of Daria Dugina was purely accidental. The target of the ultras was Alaxender Dugin, a hardline Russian ideologue often called “Putin’s brain,” for whom the bomb was planted in his car but the 30-year old daughter who had borrowed her father’s car at the last moment, became the victim and lost her life.
According to family members quoted by Russian media, Daria Dugina, born in 1992, was killed when a bomb placed in her Toyota Land Cruiser went off as she drove on a highway near the village of Bolshie Vyzyomy, some 40 kilometres outside Moscow, Russia’s Investigative Committee said in a statement. Dugina died on the scene and a homicide investigation has been opened, said the committee, which probes major crime cases in Russia.
Dugin, a vocal supporter of Kremlin’s offensive in Ukraine -sometimes called “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,” media reports said.
(Manas Dasgupta)
