NEWSWEEK
BY SCOTT MCDONALD ON 8/21/22 AT 7:33 PM EDT
A car explosion Saturday night in Moscow has grabbed worldwide attention, mostly because of the death of Daria Dugin, daughter of Alexander Dugin, the man known for Russian propaganda and otherwise known as Russian President Vladimir Putin‘s “brain.”
Daria was in her father’s car Saturday night when it exploded, many thinking the blast was intended for her father, who wasn’t in the vehicle when it happened.
On Sunday evening, a former Russian state deputy said the country’s National Republic Army (NRA) was responsible.
“This action (the murder of Dugina – ed.), like many other direct action partisan actions carried out on the territory of Russia in recent months, was carried out by the National Republic Army,” former deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Ilya Ponomaryov said in a speech. “We connected with its fighters with the help of our resource Rospartyzan, which highlights the rising tide of resistance in Russia. NRA fighters authorized me to read their manifesto today.”
The manifesto, published by Ukrainian media outlet Pravda, states the National Republic Army outlaws “warmongers, robbers and oppressors of the peoples of Russia!”
“We declare President Putin a usurper of power and a war criminal who amended the Constitution, unleashed a fratricidal war between the Slavic peoples and sent Russian soldiers to certain and senseless death,” the manifesto reads on the NRA’s Telegram page. “Poverty and coffins for some, palaces for others – the essence of his policy.”
The NRA says “disenfranchised people have the right to rebel against tyrants.”
“Putin will be deposed and destroyed by us!” the manifesto continues. “Our goal is to stop the destruction of Russia and its neighbors, to stop the activities of a handful of Kremlin businessmen who have sucked on the wealth of our people and are committing crimes today inside and outside the country.”
Russian state media outlet TASS first reported Saturday night about the explosion of Dugin’s Toyota Land Cruiser Prado near the village of Velyki Vyazomy in the suburbs of Moscow, and the subsequent death of Daria.
Pravda recently reported that Alexander Dugin has been a driving force of Russian propaganda since the Crimean invasion in 2014 and one of the architects of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
“Dugin is on the U.S. sanctions list against persons guilty of aggression against Ukraine. Dugin is the founder of the ideological movement “Neo-Eurasianism” and his political activity is aimed at creating a Eurasian superpower through the integration of Russia with the former Soviet republics into the new Eurasian Union,” Pravda reported. “Dugin is considered an ideologue of “racism,” called for the murder of Ukrainians. The international press calls Dugin “Putin’s Rasputin” or “Putin’s brain,” who helped shape Putin’s view of Russia. Dugin was also the editor-in-chief of the propaganda Russian TV channel Tsargrad TV.”
Alexander Dugin in late April said that any country providing weapons to aid Ukraine in the fight against Russia should be prepared for Russia to, in turn, supply weapons against any of their aggressors.
“If the United States and European countries are calmly supplying weapons to Ukraine, why shouldn’t Russia also supply various weapons systems to its partners and proxies,” Dogin wrote on the Russian social media network Tuesday.
That meant Russia supplying any weaponry to Cuba, Venezuela or any other country within striking distance to the U.S.
The Russia-Ukraine war is entering its half-year mark this week, with Wednesday being the midpoint.
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THE TELEGRAPH reports today :
Kremlin-linked officials have vowed to strike Ukraine as Russia blamed Kyiv for a car bomb attack in Moscow that killed a prominent pro-war ideologue – the first attack in the Russian capital since the start of the war.
Ukrainian officials denied they had any links to the murder of Darya Durgina, but have still warned of increased Russian attacks around Ukraine’s Independence Day on August 24, which also marks six months since the start of the war.
“We should be aware that this week Russia may try to do something particularly nasty, something particularly cruel. Such is our enemy,” Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, said in his regular video address.
Ukraine’s Southern Military Command said it had seen several new Russian missile-carrying warships arrive in the Black Sea in the past week.
The city authorities in Kharkiv, northern Ukraine, also ordered a 36-hour curfew, and in Kyiv mass gatherings have been banned.
Ms Dugina was killed as she drove back to central Moscow in a Toyota Land Cruiser from a literary and arts festival on the outskirts of the city where her father, the prominent ultra-nationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin, had been speaking.
It is likely that Mr Dugin, who has been called “Putin’s brain” and has been close to the Kremlin, was the intended target. He was supposed to drive into Moscow with his daughter, but decided at the last minute to travel back in another car.
A video shot immediately after the bomb had exploded showed Mr Dugin holding his hands to his head in shock as he stares at the burning wreck. Rubble is strewn across the road.
Russian investigators said that Ms Dugina, 29, had died immediately “from an explosive device which had been placed under the bottom of the car on the driver’s side””.
Ms Dugina was a journalist who had shot to prominence since the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. She had reported from Mariupol in southern Ukraine, where Ukrainian soldiers in the city’s steelworks had fought off Russian attacks for weeks.
She was also a regular on trips organised by the Russian government to rebel-held Donbas in eastern Ukraine.
Last month, the British government sanctioned Ms Dugina because she “is a frequent and high-profile contributor of disinformation in relation to Ukraine”.
Ms Dugina was a vocal supporter of her father, who is perhaps the most prominent ultra-nationalist thinker in Russia. He advocates the Kremlin’s rule over a greater Eurasian state, and has called for the destruction of Ukraine.
After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Mr Dugin had encouraged the Kremlin to “kill, kill, kill” Ukrainians, and he celebrated Mr Putin’s full-scale invasion in February.
Analysts have questioned how influential Mr Dugin has been over the Kremlin’s aggressive foreign policy, but he is nevertheless an important figurehead for hardcore Slavic nationalism.
Echoing her father’s aggressive tones during her appearances on Russian state TV, Ms Dugina also regularly advocated the destruction of Ukraine.
“We started this special operation very delicately and carefully, but we need to be tougher and less forgiving. We need to create more tribunals that will investigate the crimes of these sub-humans,” she said.
The Russian government has not commented on the incident, but Kremlin-linked propagandists were accusing Ukraine of the attack even before investigators could finish picking through the debris.
Margarita Simonyan, one of Vladimir Putin’s favourite pro-war TV pundits, said that missile strikes should target Ukraine’s “decision-making centres”.
Meanwhile, Tsargrad TV, the Russian orthodox and nationalist TV network where Mr Dugin is the editor and Ms Dugina had been a commentator, said that “Kyiv should shake” from missiles strikes.
But in Kyiv, the Ukrainian government denied that it had anything to do with Ms Dugina’s murder. “We are not a criminal state, like the Russian Federation, and moreover we are not a terrorist state,” said Mykhailo Podolyak, a top presidential adviser.
Ukrainians have been celebrating in the lead-up to Independence Day by inspecting dozens of rusting and broken captured Russian tanks that the Ukrainian military towed into central Kyiv – a scene that is likely to irritate Mr Putin who had expected to capture the city within days.
On Sunday, Russian missiles also hit Odesa, the Ukrainian port city on the Black Sea which is vital to the UN-organised plan to export grain from Ukraine.
Ukraine’s Southern Military Command said that five cruise missiles were fired from the Black Sea region. It said that its air defence systems shot down two missiles, but that three had hit grain infrastructure. Russia said it had hit ammunition sites. There were no casualties.
International concern is still focused on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, which has been controlled by Russian forces since the start of the war.
Both sides have accused each other of shelling the power plant and Ukrainian officials have warned that Russia could be planning a false flag attack to justify intensifying its own attacks.
The Ukrainian governor of the town of Nikopol said that on Sunday that at least 25 Russian shells had hit the town, which lies across the Dnipro River from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, cutting power to 3,000 people.
Dugina: “We started this special operation very delicately and carefully, but we need to be tougher and less forgiving. We need to create more tribunals that will investigate the crimes of these sub-humans,” she said.”
A good example of the putinazis adherence to the Goebbells method of propaganda: always accuse others of what you are doing. Always accuse your victims of your own characteristics.
They call Ukrainians “nazis” and “subhumans”. In fact they only describe themselves.
The sprog was clearly as evil and sinister as the father.
Ukraine is hopefully working together with the various opposition groups in mafia land, as it is hopefully doing with those in Belarus. Both countries must be freed from their fascist, crime syndicate regimes.
A comment from the LinkedIn page of Marriana Kozintseva:
“Ukraine had nothing to do with the car bomb that killed the daughter of Alexandr Dugin – and Dugin is not the “top Kremlin ideologue,” either. Not dissimilar to late Vladimir Zhyrinovsky, he is merely a vocal and visceral advocate of Russia’s far right.
Unlike Zhyrinovsky, who has been keen on growing his personal political brand, Dugin, however, has always been an unabashed admirer of Putin. “Putin no longer has any opponents, and even if they did exist, they are mentally ill and should be sent for medical check-ups. Putin is everywhere, Putin is everything, Putin is absolute, Putin is irreplaceable,” Dugin wrote in 2007.
It is quite possible he outlived his usefulness – or was involved in a business deal gone wrong. In Russia, car bombs have been often a trademark on the latter. Unfortunately for Dugin and his late daughter, it is unlikely that the world will ever know. Kremlin will milk this incident for all its worth to stroke anti-Ukrainian hysteria.
Margarita Simonyan, head of government-run Russia Today and a close ally of Putin, is already on the airways calling for missile strikes on Ukraine’s “decision-making centres”.
#russiaterroriststate #standwithukraine #warinukraine
Comment from the LinkedIn page of Kestutis Eidukonis:
“100% Certain this was a KGB false flag operation. Vlad the Mad is getting desperate after the Crimean attacks. Needs to rally the Russian people to support the war – mobilization this is the same kind of tactic used to restart the Chechen war when he had KGB operatives blow up Russian apartment buildings. Old dog same old tricks. Do not be fooled.”
I think I agree here but I would put a twist on it too. I think KGB did it too but I think it was because Dugin was either stealing or the KGB warned him about his language for some reason. It looks to me like they wanted both dead so he can’t feel safe at all.