Darya Dugina facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Darya Dugina
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| Дарья Дугина | |
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Dugina in 2022
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| Born |
Darya Aleksandrovna Dugina
15 December 1992 Moscow, Russia
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| Died | 20 August 2022 (aged 29) Bolshiye Vyazyomy, Odintsovsky District, Moscow Oblast, Russia
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| Cause of death | Car bombing |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Other names | Daria Platonova |
| Alma mater | Moscow State University |
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| Parents |
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| Awards | Order of Courage (posthumous) |
Darya Aleksandrovna Dugina (Russian: Да́рья Алекса́ндровна Ду́гина; 15 December 1992 – 20 August 2022), also known under the pen name Daria Platonova (Russian: Дарья Платонова), was a Russian journalist, political scientist, and activist. She was the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin, a supporter of Vladimir Putin and a far-right political philosopher, whose support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine she shared.
She was killed in August 2022 in a car bombing on the outskirts of Moscow.
Contents
Early life and education
Darya Dugina was born on 15 December 1992 in Moscow, Russia. She was the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin and his second wife, philosopher Natalya Melentyeva. In 2012/2013, while studying at Moscow State University, she was an intern at Bordeaux Montaigne University, specializing in Ancient Greek philosophy. Her MSU degree "focused on the political philosophy of late Neo-Platonism".
Career and activism
After university, she worked as a journalist, writing for the state-controlled media outlet RT and the pro-Kremlin conservative channel Tsargrad, using the pen name Daria Platonova. She was affiliated with the International Eurasian Movement, and worked for them as a political commentator.
According to the United States Department of the Treasury, which added her to the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List on 3 March 2022, she was the chief editor of a disinformation website called United World International which states it was owned by Putin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin, who also controlled the state-backed Wagner Group. At the same time, she served as a press secretary of her father.
Russian invasion of Ukraine
Dugina was an outspoken supporter of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In particular, she claimed that the war crimes against Ukrainian civilians by the Russian army during the invasion were staged. She mentioned that the war in Ukraine "serves to break the bridges of interaction between Russia and Europe, a struggle between two worldviews." In June 2022, she visited occupied Donetsk and Mariupol.
Dugina visited the Azovstal plant in Mariupol, where she collaborated with British journalist Graham Phillips, who also worked for Russian state media. On 4 July 2022, she was sanctioned by the British government, which accused her of being a "frequent and high-profile contributor of disinformation in relation to Ukraine and the Russian invasion of Ukraine on various online platforms." She responded by saying that she is an ordinary journalist and should not have been sanctioned.
Killing
| Killing of Darya Dugina | |
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| Location | Bolshiye Vyazyomy, Odintsovsky District, Moscow Oblast, Russia |
| Coordinates | 55°37′48″N 36°59′06″E / 55.629880°N 36.985060°E |
| Date | 20 August 2022 c. 21:45 (MSK) |
| Target | Aleksandr Dugin, or Darya Dugina, or both |
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Attack type
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Car bomb |
| Assailants | |
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.
The "Tradition" festival is held at the Zakharovo estate, approximately 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) north of Bolshiye Vyazyomy. Investigators said an explosive device was attached to the underside of the car. 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, or whether the intention might have been to kill both.
Claim of responsibility from National Republican Army
Ilya Ponomarev, a former member of Russia's State Duma now living in exile in Ukraine, claimed that a Russian partisan group was responsible for the attack, and that the hitherto unknown group calls itself National Republican Army (NRA) (Russian: Национальная республиканская армия (НРА)).
Ponomarev statements about NRA involvement
Ponomarev claims the NRA is an underground group working inside Russia, dedicated to removing Putin from power. He has subsequently claimed it is a "network" of clandestine cells. In Ponomarev's narrative to the Kyiv Post, the group has 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 elaborated 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 claims 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. Ponomarev gave a similar account to Radio NV (Ukrainian: Радіо НВ), adding that his contacts "sent certain photos to prove their involvement."
Along with the claim of responsibility for the assassination, Ponomarev aired the organization's manifesto on his media outlet "February Morning" (Russian: Утра Февраля) and hailed it as "a new page in Russian resistance to Putinism. New—but not the last." Later confronted with the news of the FSB's accusation of Ukrainian involvement, Ilya Ponomarev told the Meduza news outlet that his purported sources in the National Republican Army deny the claimed Ukrainian being the perpetrator while leaving ambiguous whether she may have had a role. In both Meduza and a message to his Telegram channel "Rospartisan" (Russian: Роспартизан), Ponomarev appeared to take credit for her exfiltration from Russia at the request of unnamed "friends". Following his announcement of support for the assassination and the NRA, Ponomarev claims to have been disinvited from a planned meeting of Russian dissidents.
Scepticism about NRA involvement
As of 21 August 2022[update], Associated Press and The Guardian articles concerning the death of Dugina and its aftermath state that the claim of a National Republican Army responsibility cannot be confirmed. 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!" (Russian: боритесь как мы, боритесь вместе с нами, боритесь лучше нас!) inspired by the Deutscher Fernsehfunk children's television show Do with us, do as we do, do better than us! 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."
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 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 same building where Dugina lived, and both were present at the same festival Dugina attended before she was 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.
Interfax later reported that the FSB named an accomplice, a middle-aged male Ukrainian national, as providing logistical assistance to the primary assassin. Specifically, the FSB alleged that the accomplice provided the primary suspect with their false license plates and a Kazakhstani passport, and assisted in bomb assembly while in Russia. The FSB further alleged that the accomplice had also escaped to Estonia. The name of the alleged accomplice was released by FSB on 29 August 2022.
The later Interfax report elaborated that the FSB assert that the primary assassin tailed Dugina within the parking lot for guests at the "Tradition," followed Dugina's Land Cruiser in her own Mini Cooper, and detonated the bomb via remote control. It has been impossible to independently verify any of the claims made by the FSB as Russia has criminalized disagreement with the official narrative of the killing and the war in Ukraine in general, and has shut down all non-Kremlin approved reporting.
On 23 October 2023, The Washington Post reported that the 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.
