Daughter of 'Putin's brain' killed in suspected car bomb attack near Moscow

The daughter of a key Vladimir Putin ally has been killed in a suspected car bomb attack outside Moscow.

Ultra-nationalist Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin, who advocates Russia absorbing Ukraine, was due to travel and may have been in the target in the attack on Saturday evening, reports suggest.

Instead Darya ‘Dasha’ Dugina was killed after a suspected explosive device went off in a Toyota Land Cruiser, according to state investigators. It is not clear if anyone else was hurt in the incident.

Russia’s TASS state news agency quoted Andrei Krasnov, someone who knew prominent ideologue Mr Dugina, as saying the vehicle belonged to the father and that he was probably being targeted.

He has been described as ‘Putin’s brain’.

Father and daughter had been attending a festival outside Moscow but Mr Dugin had decided to switch cars at the last minute, Russian government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta claimed.

Investigators described Ms Dugina as a journalist and political expert.

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Nationalist TV channel Tsargrad said today: ‘Dasha, like her father, has always been at the forefront of confrontation with the West.’

They added that they had opened a murder case and would be carrying out forensic examinations in an effort to work out exactly what had happened.

TV footage accompanying the statement shows investigators collecting debris and fragments from the explosion site.

A bearded man is seen with his head in hands next to what appears to be the blurred remains of a victim, with a fireball in the background.

They said they were considering ‘all versions’ to work out who was responsible.

Mr Dugin has long advocated the unification of Russian-speaking and other territories in a vast new Russian empire.

The incident comes amid a host of Ukrainian attacks on Russian-occupied territory amid the war, but it is unclear if Ukraine’s forces are behind this attack.

No suspects were immediately identified.

But Denis Pushilin, president of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, blamed it on ‘terrorists of the Ukrainian regime, trying to kill Alexander Dugin’.

The influence of Mr Dugin, who is on a US sanctions list, over the Russian President has been a subject to differing speculation, with some Russia watchers claiming that his sway is significant and others suggesting it is minimal.

Ms Dugina, who also went by the surname Platonova and was reported by Russian state media to be 30 years old, broadly supported her father’s ideas and appeared on state TV in her own right to offer support for Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

Other reports suggest she was 29.

In a statement in March, the US Treasury said Ms Dugina, the chief editor of the United World International website, which has suggested Ukraine would ‘perish’ if admitted to the NATO military alliance, had been put on a US sanctions list.

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