A Toyota Land Cruiser “went off at full speed on a public highway” and caught fire, it said, adding that the fire was likely caused by an “explosive device” installed in the vehicle. The driver, identified by the committee as “journalist and political scientist Daria Dugina,” died at the scene.
Dugina, 29, was reportedly driving her father’s car from a festival they both attended when the blast occurred, engulfing the car in flames, a friend of Dugin’s told the state-run media outlet Tass. Andrey Krasnov said he believed her father was the target of an attack, “or maybe the two of them.”
Dugin, a scathing critic of the United States, with close ties to the Kremlin, is sometimes referred to as “Putin’s Rasputin” or “Putin’s brain.” Although he doesn’t hold an official government position, he has long called for the reabsorption of Ukraine into Russia, and Russia experts say his language and thinking about Russia’s supposed rightful place in the world have been echoed by the Kremlin and in recent speeches by Putin.
His daughter has also spoken publicly in support of the war in Ukraine and Russian imperial expansion. In March, she was sanctioned by the United States as part of a list of Russian elites and Russian intelligence-directed disinformation outlets, alongside her father who has been designated for sanctions since 2015.
“The car caught fire immediately [following the explosion]. She lost control, because she was driving at speed, and flew to the opposite side of the road,” Krasnov told the Russian state media outlet, describing it as a “very grave event.”
Krasnov said Dugin, who left the festival in a different vehicle, returned to the scene after the explosion. Videos circulating on social media appear to show a visibly distraught Dugin standing on a road strewn with debris, holding his head in his hands. The remains of a car were in flames on the roadside.
The blast occurred about 9 p.m. local time near the village of Bolshie Vyazyomy, southwest of Moscow, the committee said.
The Kremlin has not yet commented on the incident.
The U.S. Treasury Department, upon adding Dugina to the sanctions list, said she was the chief editor of a disinformation website called United World International, which had suggested that Ukraine would “perish” if it was admitted to NATO.
The website was developed by a Russian political influence operation called “Project Lakhta,” which Treasury officials say has used fictitious online personas to interfere in U.S. elections since at least 2014.
According to Treasury officials, Dugina’s father was first designated in 2015 for “being responsible for or complicit in actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, or sovereignty or territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
Dugin was a leader of the Eurasian Youth Union, which actively recruited individuals with military and combat experience to fight on behalf of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, a separatist enclave in eastern Ukraine that has played a central role in Putin’s justification for war.
In an interview with a Russian YouTuber in March, Dugina said that Ukrainian identity is mostly localized in western Ukraine, and that eastern Ukraine — including the Donbas region — was likely to accept a “Eurasian Empire” on the basis of religious faith and nationality.
Ukrainian officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment as the incident appeared poised to create a new flash point.
Denis Pushilin, a prominent separatist leader and key figure in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, immediately blamed Ukraine for Dugina’s death, without providing any evidence for his claims.
