Russia’s FSB security service has blamed Kyiv for the car bombing that killed the daughter of a prominent supporter of Vladimir Putin’s, accusing a Ukrainian woman of planting the car bomb before fleeing to Estonia.
Nationalist commentator Daria Dugina, 29, was killed on Saturday when a bomb exploded under the driver’s seat of a vehicle that belonged to her father, Alexander Dugin, a far-right ideologue.
Dugin, who has long campaigned for Moscow to rebuild its empire, joined other prominent nationalists in demanding reprisals against Ukraine. Some also called for retribution against Estonia, the Baltic nation that has been one of Kyiv’s strongest supporters in Europe.
Ukraine denied any involvement in the attack. Officials suggested Russia had staged it as a pretext for what Kyiv fears could be an intense assault ahead of the country’s independence day on Wednesday, which will also mark six months since the Russian invasion.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a senior adviser to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said the accusations came from a “fictional world” and claimed “vipers in Russian special services started an intraspecies fight”.
The FSB said a 43-year-old Ukrainian named Natalya Vovk was responsible for the killing. It said she entered Russia on July 23 with her 12-year-old daughter, claiming she rented an apartment in Dugina’s building in Moscow and followed her in a Mini Cooper, regularly changing its number plates.
Vladimir Dzhabarov, a senior member of Russia’s upper house of parliament, demanded that Estonia hand over the alleged suspect.
“If Estonia refuses to extradite criminal Natalya Vovk to Russia . . . there is every reason for Russia to take tough action against the Estonian state that is harbouring the terrorist,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Margarita Simonyan, editor of the Kremlin-funded RT news channel, where Dugina was a frequent guest, suggested Russia should find “professionals who want to take in the spires in the suburbs of Tallinn”.
The comment was a reference to Simonyan’s own notorious interview with the suspects in the 2018 poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal in the UK cathedral city of Salisbury, which Russia has always denied being responsible for.
Estonia’s police said Russia had not made any official requests about Vovk.
Putin condemned the killing as a “despicable, cruel crime” and saying the young woman “honestly served the people, the Fatherland, and proved by her actions what it means to be a patriot of Russia”.
The FSB alleged that Vovk and her daughter followed Dugina to a festival of “traditional values” where the elder Dugin gave a lecture, then fled over a land border to Estonia.
It posted video footage of what it said was Vovk driving into Russia with her daughter in the Mini, driving it around Moscow, entering Dugina’s apartment building and leaving Russia for Estonia on Sunday.
The FSB did not publish any evidence linking Vovk to the car bombing or showing her anywhere near the festival. The FSB’s allegations have not otherwise been independently verified and the Financial Times was not able to reach Vovk for comment.
Konstantin Malofeyev, a hardline pro-Kremlin tycoon who bankrolls a channel where both father and daughter regularly appeared, published a statement from Dugin in which he called for retaliation against Ukraine.
“Our hearts are not just thirsting for revenge or retribution. That’s too petty, it’s not the Russian way. We only need our Victory,” he wrote. “My daughter laid her virginal life at its altar. So please, win!”
However, Ilya Ponomarev, a former Russian MP who was later expelled from parliament for opposing Putin and now lives in Kyiv, said he was in touch with a group of Russian partisans who claimed responsibility for the attack.
Speaking on YouTube on Sunday night Ponomarev said Russian partisans from a group called the National Republican Army were behind the attack.
In the video he provided no evidence for his claim beyond reading what he said was the group’s manifesto and a brief clip of a man in combat fatigues, dark glasses, and a scarf obscuring his face.
In a phone interview with the FT Ponomarev said the partisans were a loose grouping of “very radically minded young people in Russia . . . who have been training and preparing for some time”. He insisted that they, rather than Vovk, were behind the attack.