In the Moscow region on the night of Saturday, August 20, an SUV owned by the daughter of publicist Alexander Dugin, Daria, who also carried out journalistic and social activities, exploded. The Baza Telegram channel reports the incident. According to media reports, Daria Dugina was in the car at the time of the explosion and died at the scene. Police authorities confirmed to TASS the information about the explosion and the death of the driver, but did not provide her name. The explosion occurred while the car was in motion, near the village of Bolshie Vyazemy.

The explosion of a gas cylinder was initially thought to be the cause of the incident, but later an assassination attempt using an improvised explosive device became the priority version, notes Telegram channel 112.

Dugin himself should drive in the car

Daria was returning from the Tradition festival held at the Zakharovo estate, at which her father gave a lecture, family acquaintance Peter Lundstrem told Baza channel. According to him, it was originally planned that Alexander Dugin would go in the same car with his daughter, but “at the last moment” he decided to leave the property in another car after his daughter. Dugin was at the scene a few minutes after the explosion, witnesses point out.

Publicist and ideologue of the “Russian world”

Alexander Dugin is known primarily as a publicist of predominantly “correct” views, as well as one of the most famous promoters of “Russian world” ideologies and neo-Eurasianism – concepts according to which Russia should assume a dominant position in relation to its neighbors and extend their spheres of direct influence from the mainland to the Balkans and the Middle East.

In the 1990s, Dugin was one of the members of the unregistered National Bolshevik Party and later banned from Russia, after leaving it due to disagreements, he became an expert advisor to the Chairman of the State Duma of the Russian Federation. During this activity, in 2005, he introduced the “Anti-Orange Youth Front” – an organization in which Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to the Office of the President of Ukraine, also participated. According to Dugin, the organization should fight the influence of Western countries in Ukraine.

In 2014, Dugin was fired from Moscow State University, where he was head of the sociology department, after calls to “kill, kill, kill” Ukrainians made in connection with the incident at the House of Trade Unions in Odessa. After that, Dugin was included in the EU sanctions list, and in 2015 he was subject to personal sanctions from the United States and Canada. After Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine began, German intelligence services reported that they had recorded contacts between Dugin and right-wing extremists in Europe and that the nationalist views he propagated “laid the groundwork for an illegal attack on Ukraine”.

Daria Dugina, who supported her father’s ideology in her journalistic activities, was also included on US and UK sanctions lists after the start of the Russian war against Ukraine.