By Vladimir Isachenkov
Associated Press
The Russian security agency said on Monday that it had "solved the murder of Daria Dugina", accusing Ukraine's special services of orchestrating the attack that killed the daughter of a Russian nationalist and ideologue of Vladimir Putin's regime by blow up the vehicle he was driving on Saturday near Moscow.
Daria Dugina, the 29-year-old daughter of Alexander Dugin, an intellectual and political theorist whom Western analysts have described as Putin's
mastermind
, was killed in an attack "planned and carried out by Ukraine's special services," according to the Security Service. Federal (FSB, by its acronym in Russian; it is the successor agency of the KGB).
The authors of the attack activated the bomb "remotely", according to statements collected by the Russian news agency TASS.
Ukraine's presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak denied in a statement on Sunday that Ukraine was involved in the assassination.
Russian agents investigate Aug. 21 attack outside Moscow.AP
[Follow our coverage of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine]
The FSB accused a Ukrainian, Natalya Vovk, born in 1979, of carrying out the attack and then escaping to Estonia.
According to Russian authorities, Vovk moved to Russia in July with her 12-year-old daughter and rented an apartment in the building where Dugina lived to spy on her.
Vovk attended with her daughter a nationalist festival attended by Alexander Dugin and his daughter, according to the FSB.
The explosion took place at the exit, and affected the vehicle in which Dugin was going to travel and that his daughter was driving alone because the man decided at the last moment to travel in another car, according to Russian media reports.
[Alarm for the confrontation of Ukraine and Russia in the largest nuclear plant in Europe]
Alexander Dugin is a leading advocate of a political ideology that emphasizes traditional values, the restoration of Russia's global influence, and the unity of all ethnic Russians in the world.
He vehemently supported the invasion of Ukraine and urged Vladimir Putin to intensify his military operations against that country.
The car bomb attack, unusual in Moscow since the turbulent 1990s, is likely to aggravate Russia's offensive in Ukraine.
Lawyers for American basketball player imprisoned in Russia appeal her sentence
Aug. 16, 202200:22
Although the ties between Putin and Dugin are unclear, the Russian leader echoes their rhetoric and their ideas are broadcast on state television.
He helped, for example, popularize the concept of the
New Russia,
to justify the annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014.
Dugin, who has been sanctioned by the United States and Europe, has promoted the idea of Russia as a religious country, with traditional values and authoritarian leadership, and has reviled the liberal values of Western democracies.
His daughter expressed similar ideas as a commentator on the nationalist television station Tsargrad, where her father worked as an editor.
Dugina was sanctioned by the United States in March for her work on the United World International website, which the US government has labeled a Russian propaganda site.