}} Dugina was killed on 20 August 2022, when her car exploded on Mozhayskoye Highway in the settlement of
Bolshiye Vyazyomy outside Moscow around 21:45 local time. She was driving to Moscow after attending the annual festival "Tradition," which describes itself as a family festival for art lovers. It is unclear whether she was targeted deliberately, or whether her father, who had been expected to travel with her but switched to another car at the last minute, was the intended target,
Investigation On 22 August, the Russian
Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed that
Ukrainian special services were behind the killing, alleging that their primary suspect was Natalia Vovk, a middle-aged female Ukrainian national who escaped to
Estonia after the explosion. The suspect's relatives said that she was a former clerk in the
National Guard of Ukraine. According to the FSB, after arriving with her daughter in Russia the previous month the Ukrainian rented an apartment in the building where Dugina lived, and she was at the festival which Dugina attended before being killed. The FSB also released surveillance footage from cameras at the entrance of the apartment building and at the border crossing points, purportedly showing the suspect, and said that she drove a
Mini Cooper. The FSB allege she used a
license plate from the Donetsk People's Republic, then switched to a
plate from Kazakhstan and then used a
plate from Ukraine to cross the
border to Estonia. The name of the alleged accomplice was released by FSB on 29 August 2022. On 23 October 2023,
The Washington Post reported that the
Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) had carried out dozens of assassinations in Russia since the invasion began, including the bomb attack that killed Darya Dugina, which Ukraine had previously denied.
Unofficial versions Claim of responsibility from National Republican Army Ilya Ponomarev, a former member of Russia's
State Duma living in exile in Ukraine, said that a Russian
partisan group was responsible for the attack, and that the hitherto unknown group calls itself the
National Republican Army (NRA).
Ponomarev's statements about NRA involvement Ponomarev said the NRA is an underground group working inside Russia, dedicated to removing Putin from power. He later said it is a "network" of
clandestine cells. Ponomarev told the
Kyiv Post the group previously carried out anonymous arson attacks on military induction centers, then shifted to targeting Dugin and Dugina as "something high-profile for which they could become well known." He said that a contact in the group told him a week before the assassination to expect "something big," followed by instructions on the day of the event to "watch the news." Following news coverage of the assassination, Ponomarev said that he was provided evidence of the group's responsibility. Ponomarev added that his sources believed two persons (i.e., both Dugin and Dugina) were in the targeted car. From Ponomarev's statement, it is unclear whether she was targeted deliberately, or whether her father was the intended target, or whether the intention might have been to kill both. Along with the claim of responsibility for the assassination, Ponomarev aired the organization's manifesto on his media outlet "February Morning" () and hailed it as "a new page in Russian resistance to
Putinism. New—but not the last." Following his announcement of support for the assassination and the NRA, Ponomarev said that he was disinvited from a planned meeting of Russian dissidents. A 22 August 2022 report from
Reuters says that "
Ponomarev's assertion and the group's existence could not be independently verified." In an interview with Ponomarev for
Meduza, both the interviewer Svetlana Reiter and the editor note skepticism about his claims about the Russian NRA, his accommodations of Putin in his Duma career, and the source of his wealth. Separately,
Meduza managing editor Kevin Rothrock questioned Ponomarev's integrity, the existence of the NRA, and implied that both Dugin and Dugina were civilians who should not have been targeted. Citing the livestream of
Yulia Latynina,
Cathy Young discussed the possibility that Ponomarev is a "a
grifter trying to sell a good story", but said that the NRA manifesto's appeal to patriotism is not suggestive of
black propaganda.
Sergey S. Radchenko, a professor at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the
Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, told
Deutsche Welle he found the claim of responsibility and manifesto to both be "dodgy." Deutsche Welle's reporter in Kyiv Roman Goncharenko said, "there are more questions than answers" about the group, and noted that the group's purported manifesto employs a
call to action "fight like us, fight with us, fight better than us!" () inspired by the
Deutscher Fernsehfunk children's television show that aired in both
East Germany and the Soviet Union until 1991. Matthew Sussex of
Australian National University's National Security College wrote that "very few observers believe the hitherto-unknown National Republican Army, which claimed responsibility for the killing, was to blame. But if it were, then it points to the real possibility of organised domestic terrorism in Russia." In
The New Yorker,
Masha Gessen mused that "either the National Republican Army is a new group using terrorist tactics, and it killed Dugina to show what it's capable of; or this is, in effect, a marketing move, a rush to take credit. In either case—whether the National Republican Army is real or fictional—this version is probably inching closer to the truth."
Reactions Ukrainian government response The Ukrainian government denied any involvement, with Ukrainian presidential advisor
Mykhailo Podolyak stating that "we are not a criminal state like the Russian Federation, much less a terrorist one",
Estonian government response The
Minister of Foreign Affairs for Estonia,
Urmas Reinsalu, said that the claim that Dugina's assassin fled to safe harbor in Estonia was "[one] provocation in a very long line of provocations by the Russian Federation" and rejected the claim that Dugina's alleged killer had fled to Estonia. In statements to
The New York Times,
law enforcement in Estonia said that Russia had not
requested their assistance.
US intelligence assessment According to an assessment by the
United States Intelligence Community reported by
The New York Times on 5 October 2022, officials believe that parts of the Ukrainian government authorized the killing, with some US officials suspecting that Aleksandr Dugin was the intended target, albeit with Darya Dugina also being in the car.
Russian reaction On 21 August 2022, exiled former parliamentarian
Ilya Ponomarev, via services read aloud a manifesto of the NRA calling for armed action against the regime and endorsed both the assassination and the manifesto. The following day, the anti-Putin exile group the
Russian Action Committee blacklisted Ponomarev from attending the Free Russia Congress on grounds that he had "called for terrorist attacks on Russian territory." The committee's statement also implied that Dugina was a "civilian" who "did not take part in the armed confrontation," and similarly condemned the mockery of Alexandr Dugin following the attack as "a demonstrative rejection of normal human empathy for the families of the victims." Dugina's father,
Aleksandr Dugin, called the killing a "terrorist act executed by the Nazi Ukrainian regime" and wrote that "we need only our victory." Russian president
Vladimir Putin sent a message of condolences to the family of Dugina, describing her as a "bright, talented person with a real Russian heart." Putin posthumously awarded Dugina the
Order of Courage. The head of the Kremlin-recognized breakaway
Donetsk People's Republic,
Denis Pushilin, claimed that Ukrainian authorities were behind the explosion. In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, the United States-government backed Ukrainian news service
Svoboda.org gathered various perspectives from Russian-language social media. They included a round-up of reactions from pro-regime figures including former
National Bolshevik Party member
Zakhar Prilepin blaming Ukrainians (and calling for grenade attacks in reprisal); blaming Poles;
Yegor Kholmogorov,
Darya Mitina,
Yevgeny Primakov Jr. attributing the death to Westerners in general; and blaming
Alexei Navalny. The same compilation included responses from opponents and critics of Putin.
Dmitry Gudkov wrote of the event as a "boomerang" () for Dugin's warlike rhetoric.
Maria Baronova observed that since the outbreak of the "special military operation" assassinations were shifting from cloaked poisonings back to openly violent means, and recalled wry advice from the 1990s to avoid expensive cars.
Grigorii Golosov theorized that the attack was meant for Darya Dugina (and not her father) to provide an appealing martyr for anti-Ukraine hawks, though he stressed that he would refrain from guessing whom these hawks are.
Alexander Nevzorov wrote that neither Dugin nor Dugina were important, but noted the assassination had created fear among Putin's circles.
Pope Francis condemned the killing of Darya Dugina and mentioned it as an example of the "madness of war," called Dugina "an innocent victim." The statement was strongly criticized by the
Ukrainian ambassador to the
Holy See Andrii Yurash, and the Ukrainian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the
Apostolic Nuncio in Ukraine Archbishop
Visvaldas Kulbokas for explanations on the issue. In a statement to
Vatican News, the Holy See clarified that the Pope's words were to be interpreted as a defense of human life, not as a political defense of Dugina, noting that Francis has repeatedly condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In
The Conversation, Matthew Sussex of
Australian National University's National Security College wrote: "any way you cut it, the killing of Darya Dugina brings Putin's own leadership into question. This is something he has scrupulously avoided. He is obsessed with control, and enjoys the support of a massive propaganda machine to turn defeats into triumphs and blame others for his mistakes."
Funeral and burial On 23 August 2022, a farewell ceremony for Dugina was held at a TV studio in Moscow's
Ostankino Tower, where she was
lying in state; it was attended, among others, by far-right party leader
Leonid Slutsky, propagandist
Dmitry Kiselyov, and "Putin's chef," government and military contractor
Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of
A Just Russia — For Truth Sergey Mironov,
Deputy Chairman of the
State Duma Sergey Neverov,
National Bolshevik writer and activist
Zakhar Prilepin, the head of the State television
Rossiya Segodnya Dmitry Kiselyov,
Governor of Khabarovsk Krai Mikhail Degtyarev, ultra-conservative oligarch
Konstantin Malofeev and Vladimir Putin's representative
Igor Shchyogolev. On the same day, the Russian
President Vladimir Putin posthumously awarded her with the
Order of Courage for "courage and selflessness shown in the performance of her professional duty." Dugina's funeral was held in the Church of St Michael the Archangel in in
Ramensky District of Moscow Oblast; the ceremony was presided by
Metropolitan Paul Ponomaryov of
Krasnodar and
Kuban, who, on behalf of
Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, extended his condolences to Aleksandr Dugin and the other relatives. After the funeral services, she was buried next to her grandmother in the village cemetery. ==Books==