The daughter of a highly influential Russian philosopher who has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin was killed over the weekend by a car bomb.
Daria Dugina, 29, died after the SUV she was driving, which belonged to her father, exploded approximately 20 miles west of Moscow.
Dugina is the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin, 60, a self-educated philosopher who has a jingoistic mindset when it comes to foreign policy and his desire for Russia to expand its borders.
The New York Times reported that he is often referred to as “Putin’s philosopher” or “Putin’s brain.” Dugina shared her father’s views and was widely viewed as a propagandist working in the media.
Officials believe that the bomb was actually intended to kill Dugin, not his daughter. Dugin escaped the alleged assassination attempt at the last minute when he decided to take another vehicle.
Russia quickly blamed Ukraine for the incident. A Ukrainian official denied the country was involved in the bombing. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.
“Ukraine certainly had nothing to do with yesterday’s explosion,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said on Sunday. “We are not a criminal state like the Russian Federation, much less a terrorist one.”
The U.S. and the U.K. sanctioned Dugina this year for being a “frequent and high-profile contributor of disinformation related to Ukraine.”
The U.S. Treasury says that Dugin controls a fringe website that “serves as a platform for Russian ultra-nationalists to spread disinformation and propaganda targeting Western and other audiences” including accused the U.S. and NATO of trying to start a war with Russia to “further terrorize the American people in all sorts of malicious ways.”