The Russian section of Radio Svoboda said in a Wednesday analysis that the Federal Security Service had solved the attack on Daria Dugina, the daughter of ideologist Alexander Dugin, in “less than 36 hours”. “This efficiency of the Russian services’ activities raises speculations about internal fights in the Kremlin,” the radio stressed.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) does not have a good reputation for quickly solving political killings or telling the truth, Radio Swoboda reported. “The murders and attempted murders of prominent Kremlin opponents remained unresolved after decades. There was not even an investigation into the nearly fatal poisoning of opposition politician Alexei Navalny in August 2020. But the Dugina case was allegedly resolved in less than 36 hours,” the radio added.
According to the FSB, Ukrainian agent Natalia Wowk got into Russia by car with her 12-year-old daughter, after which she rented an apartment in Moscow in the same building where 29-year-old Dugina lived. Wowk would follow her for weeks until she planted a deadly bomb, then fled to Estonia the same car she used to enter Russia.
“The FSB version raises some potentially embarrassing questions. How was a Ukrainian agent able to successfully get into and out of Russia at a time when the border guard reportedly thoroughly checks every Ukrainian, including searching phones. Why? Ukraine would it be aimed at the Dugins, whose influence many considered both exaggerated and waning, since there are louder supporters of war in Russia? “- asks the Russian section of Radio Swoboda.
Aleksander Dugin during his daughter’s funeral. Photo from August 23 MAXIM SHIPENKOV / PAP / EPA
A sign of a fight within the elite
The lack of hard evidence and the “staggering” speed of the investigation, it has been written, have prompted some observers to speculate that the attack may be a sign of fighting within the Russian elite.
– Most likely, the fight between the ‘peacekeepers’ who insist on ending the war and the supporters of the use of force, including Dugin, has intensified, said Viktor Nebożenko, a political commentator from Kiev, to Radio Svoboda.
Nebożenko said that those seeking agreement with the West might have tried to “remove Dugin to strengthen their position.”
In turn, Andrei Piontkovsky, a Russian analyst and critic of the Kremlin, described the FSB’s claim that Wowk killed Dugina was “monstrous in her stupidity.”
Alexander Dugin, Daria’s father, is a far-right Russian ideologist who helped “sow the seeds for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” Dugin gladly advocates violence. In 2014, he said, inter alia, that “Ukrainians must be murdered, murdered and murdered”.
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