Hundreds mourn Russian nationalist's daughter
killed in car bomb
Issued on:
23/08/2022 - 12:22
Modified:
23/08/2022 - 12:21
Moscow
(AFP) – Hundreds gathered Tuesday for the Moscow funeral of Daria Dugina, the
daughter of a prominent ultranationalist intellectual, who was killed in a car
bombing that Russia blames on Ukraine.
Alexander
Dugin -- a vocal supporter of the Kremlin's military campaign who has claimed
to be close to President Vladimir Putin -- may have been the intended target of
the attack that killed his 29-year-old daughter.
Ukraine
denies any involvement.
Mourners --
many carrying flowers -- paid their respects at a hall in Moscow's Ostankino TV
centre where her black-and-white portrait was displayed over an open casket.
Dugin and
his wife, both dressed in black, sat next to their daughter's coffin.
"She
died for the people, for Russia, at the front. The front -- it is here,"
Dugin said at the ceremony.
Dugina was
killed Saturday when a bomb placed in her car went off as she drove on a
highway outside Moscow.
Moscow says
Ukrainian intelligence was behind the attack -- a claim dismissed by Kyiv.
Russia's
powerful FSB security agency said Monday it had "solved" the crime --
just two days after the incident -- naming a Ukrainian woman as Dugina's
attacker.
The FSB
said the perpetrator had rented an apartment in the same building as Dugina and
followed her in a car, suggesting that Dugina was the intended victim.
However,
Russian media reported that Dugin and his daughter had had a last-minute change
of plans, with Dugina driving her father's car.
Like
father, like daughter
The US
Department of State said in a Monday press briefing that it
"condemns" targeting civilians while stating that Ukraine had denied
any involvement.
"I
have no doubt that the Russians will investigate this. I also have no doubt
that the Russians will put forward certain conclusions," State Department
spokesman Ned Price said.
Russia's
foreign ministry said Washington's reaction "discredits the international
activity" of the United States.
"Washington
has no moral right... to judge human rights in remote parts of the world, since
the murder of a journalist is not even commented on from this angle,"
foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on social media.
Dugin, 60,
gained prominence in the 1990s in the intellectual chaos that followed the break-up
of the Soviet Union. He had been an anti-communist dissident in the last years
of Soviet rule.
He
co-founded the opposition National Bolshevik Party but quit it to set up the
Eurasian party which calls for Russia to reclaim its former territories and
create an empire spanning from Europe to Asia.
Dugin
backed Russia's much-criticised 2014 annexation of Crimea, following which he
called for a wider attack on Ukraine. He was then put on a Western sanctions
list.
A regular
on Russian television, the heavily bearded intellectual with the air of a
prophet claimed he had an ideological influence on Putin.
Putin has
become increasingly hostile towards the West, and some see Dugin's hand in
this, calling him "Putin's Rasputin" or "Putin's brain".
While Putin
has never publicly supported him, on Monday the Kremlin released a message of
condolences from the president, denouncing the "vile crime" that had
led to Dugina's death.
Putin
posthumously awarded Dugina the "Order of Courage". The medal was
displayed near her coffin on the day of the funeral.
She covered
the conflict in the Russian-backed separatist enclaves in eastern Ukraine,
which she backed.
Like her
father, Dugina came under US sanctions at the start of March.
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