Darya Aleksandrovna Dugina (Russian: Дарья Александровна Дугина; 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 far-right political philosopher, whose political views and support for Vladimir Putin she shared.
She was killed in August 2022 in a car bombing on the outskirts of Moscow. Later, Vasyl Malyuk, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), indirectly confirmed Ukraine's involvement in the assassination.
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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". She was in a PhD program, but she left the university before completing her degree.
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 it 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
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 one kilometre (1⁄2 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.
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 Natalia Vovk, 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 building where Dugina lived, and she was at the festival which Dugina attended before being 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 alleged that 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 the FSB assertion, that the primary assassin tailed Dugina in 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 partially criminalized disagreement with the official narrative of the killing and the war in Ukraine in general, and has made independent verification more difficult.
On 23 October 2023, The Washington Post reported that the Security Service of Ukraine (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. Ukrainian Natalia Vovk, whose name appeared in the reports of Russian law enforcement officers, imported components of an explosive device into Russia in a cat carrier. The CIA did not comment on the article. The head of the SBU, Vasyl Malyuk, said that all the objectives of his department's operations were completely legitimate.
Unofficial versions
Ilya Ponomarev, a former member of Russia's State Duma living in exile in Ukraine, said that a Russian partisan group was responsible for the attack, and that the hitherto unknown group calls itself the National Republican Army (NRA).
Ponomarev said the NRA is an underground group working inside Russia, dedicated to removing Putin from power. He later said it is a "network" of clandestine cells. Ponomarev told the Kyiv Post the group 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 said 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 said 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: Утро Февраля) and hailed it as "a new page in Russian resistance to Putinism. New—but not the last." Later, when 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 that the claimed Ukrainian was 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 said that he was disinvited from a planned meeting of Russian dissidents.
As of 21 August 2022, 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."
Reactions
The Ukrainian government denied any involvement, with Ukrainian presidential advisor Mykhailo Podolyak stating that "we are not a criminal state like the Russian Federation, much less a terrorist one", and later blaming the killing on infighting between Russian security agencies. While refusing to give comment on the assassination itself, the spokesman for the Chief Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine told The Washington Post that "I can say that the process of internal destruction of the 'Russky Mir', or the 'Russian world', has begun", and predicted that "the Russian world will eat and devour itself from the inside."
The Minister of Foreign Affairs for Estonia, Urmas Reinsalu, said that the claim that Dugina's assassin fled to safe harbor in Estonia was "[one] provocation in a very long line of provocations by the Russian Federation" and rejected the claim that Dugina's alleged killer had fled to Estonia. Reinsalu and the Ministry urged Estonians to avoid travel to Russia, and advised those on short term travel in Russia to hasten their exit. In statements to The New York Times, law enforcement in Estonia said that Russia had not requested their assistance.
According to an assessment by the United States Intelligence Community reported by The New York Times on 5 October 2022, officials believe that parts of the Ukrainian government authorized the killing, with some US officials suspecting that Aleksandr Dugin was the intended target, albeit with Darya Dugina also being in the car. American officials also admonished Ukrainian officials over the killing, it reported, and said that they were not aware of the operation.
On 21 August 2022, exiled former parliamentarian Ilya Ponomarev, via services read aloud a manifesto of the NRA calling for armed action against the regime and endorsed both the assassination and the manifesto. The following day, the anti-Putin exile group the Russian Action Committee blacklisted Ponomarev from attending the Free Russia Congress on grounds that he had "called for terrorist attacks on Russian territory." The committee's statement also implied that Dugina was a "civilian" who "did not take part in the armed confrontation", and similarly condemned the mockery of Alexandr Dugin following the attack as "a demonstrative rejection of normal human empathy for the families of the victims".
Dugina's father, Aleksandr Dugin, called the killing a "terrorist act executed by the Nazi Ukrainian regime" and wrote that "we need only our victory." Russian president Vladimir Putin sent a message of condolences to the family of Dugina, describing her as a "bright, talented person with a real Russian heart." Putin posthumously awarded Dugina the Order of Courage. The head of the Kremlin-recognized breakaway Donetsk People's Republic, Denis Pushilin, claimed that Ukrainian authorities were behind the explosion.
Funeral and burial
On 23 August 2022, a farewell ceremony for Dugina was held at a TV studio in Moscow's Ostankino Tower, where she was lying in state; it was attended, among others, by far-right party leader Leonid Slutsky, propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov, and "Putin's chef", government and military contractor Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of A Just Russia — For Truth Sergey Mironov, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Sergey Neverov, National Bolshevik writer and activist Zakhar Prilepin, the head of the State television Rossiya Segodnya Dmitry Kiselyov, Governor of Khabarovsk Krai Mikhail Degtyarev, ultra-conservative oligarch Konstantin Malofeev and Vladimir Putin's representative Igor Shchyogolev. On the same day, the Russian President Vladimir Putin posthumously awarded her with the Order of Courage for "courage and selflessness shown in the performance of her professional duty".
Dugina's funeral was held in the Church of St Michael the Archangel in Mikhailovskaya Sloboda in Ramensky District of Moscow Oblast; the ceremony was presided by Metropolitan Paul Ponomaryov of Krasnodar and Kuban, who, on behalf of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, extended his condolences to Aleksandr Dugin and the other relatives. After the funeral services, she was buried next to her grandmother in the village cemetery.
Books
Eschatological Optimism, Prav Publishing, 2023, 358 pages — ISBN 978-1-952671-78-4
For a Radical Life, Prav Publishing, 2024, 70 pages — ISBN 978-1-952671-92-0
A Theory of Europe: A View of the New Right, Arktos Media, 2024. 302 pages — ISBN 978-1-915755-94-0