Moscow Car Bomb Kills Daughter of Top Pro-Kremlin Ideologue
“If the car bombing is tied to the war it would mark the first time since February that the violence unleashed on Ukraine has reached the Russian capital.”
The conflict between Russia and Ukraine is expected to sharpen further after the daughter of a prominent Kremlin ally was killed by a car bomb near Moscow.
Darya Dugina, whose father is regarded as a leading ideologue for President Putin’s regime, died when her Toyota Land Cruiser was blown apart in a blast 12 miles west of the Moscow on Saturday night.
Alexander Dugin is believed to be the prime target of the bombing, but he reportedly switched cars at the last minute. The German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported:
Daria Dugina died after a suspected explosive device on the car she was driving detonated, investigators form the Moscow region said in a statement.
TV footage showed investigators collecting debris from the roadside where the explosion happened. They have opened a murder case and are considering “all versions” of events. (…)
Dugina’s car exploded on Saturday evening as she drove home from a cultural festival that she had attended with her father.
“This was the father’s vehicle. Darya [normally drove] another car but she took his car today, while Alexander went in a different way,” Andrey Krasnov, Dugin’s friend and the head of the Russian Horizon social movement, told Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency.
“He returned, he was at the site of the tragedy. As far as I understand, Alexander or probably they together were the target.”
Kyiv Denies Involvement
Alexander Dugin’s close ties to President Putin, and his vocal support for the invasion of Ukraine, will further escalate the level of hostilities between the two countries as the Russian military offensive enters its sixth month.
British newspaper the Guardian reported:
If the car bombing is tied to the war it would mark the first time since February that the violence unleashed on Ukraine has reached the Russian capital, touching the family of a Kremlin ally near one of Moscow’s most exclusive districts.
Kyiv strongly denied the allegations. “Ukraine has absolutely nothing to do with this, because we are not a criminal state like Russia, or a terrorist one at that,” Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said in remarks broadcast on television.
Who is Dugin?
In early 1990s, Dugin came to public notice as the founding member of Russia’s National Bolshevik Party, which sought combine Communist ideology with Russian imperialism. In 2002, he left the party to create the Eurasia Party, a political group which calls for the creation of Greater Russia by exerting Moscow’s hegemony over the former Soviet Republic, including Ukraine.
President Putin adopted Dugin’s Eurasianism and enshrined it as a state doctrine for Russian geopolitical expansionism. Dugin’s “anti-Western, ultranationalist philosophy has become the dominant political ideology in Russia and has helped shape President Putin’s expansionist foreign policy, most prominently on Ukraine,” the BBC wrote.
Noting Dugin’s role in the ongoing Ukraine war, Germany’s Deutsche Welle called him “a key architect” behind the current worldview of top Kremlin lawmakers.
Russians Capture Another City, Strengthen Control in Eastern Ukraine
After almost six months of unabated fighting, the invading Russian forces made further advance in eastern Ukraine after they captured the city of Bakhmut in the Donbas region, news reports over the weekend say.
The city’s “capture would enable Russia to threaten the two largest remaining Ukrainian-held urban centers in the eastern Donbas region,” the Canadian broadcaster CBC explained.
Kremlin has declared the annexation of Ukraine’s entire Donbas region as an “unconditional priority” for the invading Russian forces. The loss of Donbas, with a size of around 6,500 square miles, could deprive Ukraine of its industrial heartland.
Sky News UK reported the fall of Bakhmut:
Russian forces have stepped up their efforts to seize one of the dwindling number of cities in eastern Ukraine not already under their control.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in its daily update that intensified fighting took place around Bakhmut in the Donbas region.
The capture of Bakhmut would allow the Russians to advance on the region’s main Ukrainian-held cities, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
The general staff update said Sloviansk and Kramatorsk were also targeted on Friday along with the Kharkiv region to the north, home to Ukraine’s second-largest city.
Bakhmut has been a key target for Russian forces for weeks as they try to complete the months-long campaign to take control of the whole Donbas region.
U.S. to Supply Further Advanced Weapons to Ukraine
After U.S.-supplied long-range rocket launchers proved themselves in the battle field, Washington has announced a further shipment of drones, artillery and other advanced weaponry to Ukraine.
The news comes as Ukrainian drones hit the Russian military commander center in Crimean. “A drone attack on Saturday targeted the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, with no injuries, according to the governor of the city on the annexed Crimean peninsula,” French TV channel Euronews reported
The Associated Press covered the details of the latest U.S. military aid:
The U.S. for the first time Friday said it will give Ukraine Scan Eagle surveillance drones, mine-resistant vehicles, anti-armor rounds and howitzer weapons to help Ukrainian forces regain territory and mount a counteroffensive against Russian invaders.
A senior defense official told reporters that a new $775 million aid package will include 15 Scan Eagles, 40 mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles known as MRAPs with mine-clearing rollers, and 2,000 anti-armor rounds that can help Ukraine troops move forward in the south and east, where Russian forces have placed mines. (…)
It brings the total U.S. military aid to Ukraine to about $10.6 billion since the beginning of the Biden administration.
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Comments
The Biden/Maidan/Slavic Spring is an eight year progressive process (PP) that has metastasized in a model of coups without borders.
Gell-Mann paradox at work: everybody here is extremely skeptical of mainstream narratives on everything from CRT to Trump, but lap it up when it comes to Russia. Case in point: Putin and Dugin have never met. Kremlin got him fired in 2014 as professor for extreme anti-Ukrainian views. Easily verifiable facts, but you won’t read it on BBC.
“everybody here”
I think your talking out of your rear.
That’s a shame….. Hey! What’s for lunch.
Wars are a terrible thing. Don’t start one.
Please pass that message to the establishment neo cons in the US and their chicken hawk fellow travelers who seem to insist on policies designed to PO others abroad but are outraged when those same others push back due to provocation with the means they have.
For all their bluster these same neo cons, their chicken hawk supporters and their families are almost always too busy to pick up a rifle and serve alongside the Sons and Daughters of middle America in these unnecessary foreign adventures.
It’s all about money. It always has been.
It appears that the U.S. President (and his loyal Democrats in Congress) declared war on the Russian Federation at the beginning of March 2022.
Somebody convince I’m wrong.
They don’t want a full scale war – just enough bleeding to take enormous graft and distract their idiot base.
I feel sorry for her, but not her father. Someone needs to try again.
At first I thought the same thing but I’ve since learned that she’s just as bad as daddy so I stopped feeling sorry for her.
So if an Iraqi had planted a car bomb for the daughters of senators who supported the Iraq War did such a hypothetical senator deserve it?
Ukraine denied any involvement for a reason.
Knowing that Russia is not doing so well on the battlefield and public opinion may be turning against Putin, I would not be surprised if this was an inside job to inflame the people. Then again, the people may want rid of Putin and his brain trust. Who knows.
Scarier still Russia is about to occupy New York.
So? China already occupies Washington DC!
NYC would do better with Putin in charge than that idiot Adams.
Whitewall:
Remembering that the murder of Rasputin was carried out by loyal Tsarists trying to remove his influence on the Imperial family, your conjecture has to be considered seriously.
Subotai Bahadur
Another thought, just in passing, but consider this. Dugin and his daughter are traveling in separate cars. WHY did Dugin have them swap cars? Did he know that there was a threat against him from whatever source? Would you swap cars and put a daughter at risk of being blown up? Interesting family dynamic. Myself, I would try to get different cars for both of us and sort out the ones that may have been set up with bombs later. Given the bloody-minded choice of Dugin, one has to wonder what kind of advice he is giving Putin.
Subotai Bahadur
Car swaps happen all the time in the United States, almost always for the must mundane reasons imaginable.
Hilarious for the people whose first thought when they hear about terrorist attacks is Ukrainians. Long history of that I guess.
Could easily be Islamic terrorism
You mean because of those Muslims who are loyally serving Russia right now you suspect Islamic terrorism?
You could literally see Russian Christians honoring their Muslim comrades by shouting Allah Akbar while their Muslim fellow soldiers shout Russian slogans.
Maybe Dugin enraged the wrong person, or maybe he ruined the wrong contract….whatever the answer Muslims are by far the least likely suspect (don’t believe me look at Russian Orthodox Christians shouting “Allah Akbar” to honor the Chechen units that fought next to them).
There is reality (a place Islam is irrelevant and the Muslim combatants are on Russia’s side or non-existent) and fantasy (a place that has Muslims just trying to kill everyone). They are not bombing their own politicians unless it is being ordered by their government (in which case the relevant factor is the man who gave the order not the soldier who carried it out)
Dugin isn’t an “ultranationalist,” he’s an ethno-nationalist. In that, he’s merely repeating a centuries old Muscovite worldview that claims Muscovy is “the new Golgotha,” a new chosen people, who will save the world (sorta like hiw China sees its world rule as their inevitable fate based on ethnic superiority). Any and all who deny or oppose said worldview is an enemy who needs to be eliminated.
The denial of Muscovy’s proper divine role in the world, and any and all domestic setbacks or problems, are solely the result of a “black” or “foul wind blowing from the West,” usually in the form of a Jewish-Freemason conspiracy. Again, you can find such statements, and foundational beliefs leading to this worldview, going back centuries.
Dugin, like many in Muscovy, continues an ethnophyletist version of Orthodoxy but adds a LOT of local pagan beliefs (such as when he recently contrasted “lunar” and “solar” Putins). He somehow manages to get the naive to claim he is Orthodox (the same set that madly claims the same thing for Putin), attempting to tap into the ethnocentric tradition in Muscovite Orthodoxy to gin up support for his ethno-nationalist worldview.
But he’s running in political circles dominated by state security thugs and the various Mafias that Putin has grafted into the government (which is nothing more than a kleptocracy). There is a much higher chance this was an intramural action than anything else.
Not to mention the STRONG evidence the FSB had no problem killing a lot of its own citizens in a series of apartment bombings to justify a war in Chechnya – what is one more body on the pile?
Russia views itself as possessing the inheritance of Byzantium and as the protector of the E Orthodox church. That’s not new at all. Sure there are ethno nationalistic elements. Why wouldn’t there be for a Nation straddling Eurasia and a history off invasion from all directions. Seems like a natural reaction, not very nice to those with more modern, western sensibilities but perfectly understandable.
The actions of the FSB, Russian military and the Russian state security apparatus along their buffer areas and the periphery of their hegemony reflect the practical realities of the area. Eurasia is a dangerous neighborhood with different rules. Our own govt has never been reticent about adapting its behavior to comport with local customs regarding use of violence and intimidation to achieve their ends. They would be incredibly foolish not to do so.
” Our own govt has never been reticent about adapting its behavior to comport with local customs regarding use of violence and intimidation to achieve their ends….”
Our own government is too busy working on aiming their guns at you and I.
“Our own government is too busy working on aiming their guns at you and I.”
Just because it should be said again.
Well sure. After all the govt, ours or any other, ultimately uses force, threat of force and intimidation to gain compliance from the population. Did y’all have some recent examples to offer that aren’t well known to the rest of us? IOW, beyond ruby ridge, Waco, Clive Bundy and Ashley Babbitt and the like as opposed to basic law enforcement where LEO are told to prioritize enforcement of a particular issue?
The reason I ask is the existence of a two decade + war on terror with thousands of US service members dead, tens of thousands injured and trillions spent across multiple continents and conflicts which suggests the govt has been aiming many of their guns in an outward direction.
“…the existence of a two decade + war on terror…”
There is no war on terror and there never has been. There has been a facade, a money laundering operation, that removes dollars from your pocket and moves it to the allies of the ruling class.
Your statement was not responsive to the question posed which asked you for examples of the US govt pointing their guns at citizens beyond the high profile instances I stipulated or routine law enforcement actions. FWIW, I believe the militaristic attitudes and TTP of LEO are not warranted and are counter productive but that’s a separate discussion.
The casualty counts of US service members KIA and WIA over the last two decades would seem to disprove your notion that the previous two decades were nothing more than a financial transaction. Perhaps you didn’t intend to fail to acknowledge those facts, nevertheless you did exclude those facts from your response.
It’s nice that you acknowledge the unwise decisions of our foreign policy makers as well as point out the very open issues of kickbacks, graft, corruption and rent seeking between the defense companies, SR military officers, members of Congress and permanent DC denizens.
Please keep in mind these same folks are now using Ukraine to extend their grift while refusing to work for a diplomatic solution to end the conflict. Instead they are deliberately ratcheting up the tensions and not coincidently their profits by offering further unnecessary provocation to Russia.
They re really after us normal citizens
Trump is just in the way
Don’t trust anything coming out of Moscow on this issue. With a little research I found the relationship between Dugin and Putin is complicated, and there are many Russia watchers who suspect this is an internal attack.
Ukraine should be doing stuff like this car bombing to bring the war home to Russia.