Russia blames Ukraine for nationalist’s car bombing death

Russia on Aug. 22 declared Ukrainian intelligence responsible for the brazen car bombing that killed the daughter of a leading right-wing Russian political thinker over the weekend. Ukraine denied involvement.

Darya Dugina, a 29-year-old commentator with a nationalist Russian TV channel, died when a remotely controlled explosive device planted in her SUV blew up on Saturday night as she was driving on the outskirts of Moscow, ripping the vehicle apart and killing her on the spot, authorities said.

Her father, Alexander Dugin, a philosopher, writer and political theorist who ardently supports Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to send troops into Ukraine, was widely believed to be the intended target. Russian media quoted witnesses as saying that the SUV belonged to Dugin and that he had decided at the last minute to travel in another vehicle.

Russia's Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor to the KGB, said Dugina's killing was "prepared and perpetrated by the Ukrainian special services."
The FSB said a Ukrainian citizen, Natalya Vovk, carried out the killing and then fled to Estonia.
In Estonia, the prosecutor general's office said in a statement carried by the Baltic News Services that it "has not received any requests or inquiries from the Russian authorities on this topic."
The FSB said Vovk arrived in Russia in July with her 12-year-old daughter and rented an apartment in the building where Dugina lived in order to shadow her. It said that Vovk and her daughter were at a nationalist festival that Dugin and his daughter attended just before the killing.
The agency released video of the suspect from surveillance cameras at the border crossings and at the entrance to the Moscow apartment building.