Daria Dugina, the 29-year old daughter of prominent Russian political philosopher Alexander Dugin, was killed exactly one year ago when the SUV she was driving was destroyed by a powerful explosion.
An investigation conducted by Russian law enforcement agencies revealed that the blast was caused by an explosive device attached to the vehicle by an agent of the Ukrainian secret police.
The perpetrator of this assassination was identified by Russian authorities as Natalya Vovk, a Ukrainian national born in 1979 who arrived in Russia together with her 12-year-old daughter in July 2022.
Having rented an apartment in the same residential building where Dugina lived, Vovk allegedly gathered information about her habits and daily routine before finally making her move.
Door cam footage of Natalya Vovk, Ukrainian national suspected of killing Russian journalist Daria Dugina.
© Photo : FSB
On August 20, 2022, Vovk and her daughter both attended a literary and music festival where Dugina participated as an honored guest.
Following Dugina's murder, Vovk and her daughter promptly fled to Estonia, entering the country by car through a border crossing in Russia’s Pskov region.
According to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), Vovk used different license plates on her Mini Cooper during different stages of her journey: she entered Russia using Donetsk People's Republic plates, switched to Kazakhstan plates while moving around Moscow, before finally switching to Ukrainian plates when leaving Russia.
The assassination was allegedly planned by Vovk together with another Ukrainian national, Bogdan Tsyganenko, who arrived in Russia from Estonia in July 2022 and who left the country the day prior to Dugina’s assassination, the FSB noted.
It was not immediately clear at the time of Dugina’s murder exactly who was the target: Daria herself or her father, since the car she was driving at the time actually belonged to Alexander Dugin.
Dugin, a Russian political philosopher and intellectual, has been touted by Western mainstream media since the beginning of the Ukrainian conflict in 2014 as Putin's confidante and adviser, despite the fact that these claims do not hold water.
The regime in Kiev, perhaps predictably, claimed that they had nothing to do with Dugina’s murder and Western governments did not seem to be particularly upset by this assassination.