Iran Press/ America: The US intelligence community believes that the car bombing that killed Darya Dugina, the daughter of prominent Russian political figure Alexander Dugin, was authorized by elements within the Ukrainian government, sources briefed on the intelligence told CNN.
The US was not aware of the plan beforehand, according to the sources, and it is still unclear who exactly the US believes signed off on the assassination. It is also not clear whether the US intelligence community believes that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was aware of the plot or authorized it.
But the intelligence finding, first reported by the New York Times, would seem to corroborate elements of the Russian authorities’ findings that the car bombing was “pre-planned.” Russia had accused Ukrainian nationals of being responsible for the attack, which Ukraine had strongly denied in the aftermath of the explosion.
Asked to comment, a Ukrainian defense intelligence official told CNN Wednesday evening following publication of the latest reports that their agency had no new information on Dugina’s death. Shortly after her death, the same official had told CNN that Ukraine had nothing to do with it.
The National Security Council, CIA and State Department declined to comment.
US intelligence officials believe that Dugina was driving her father’s car on the night she was killed, and that her father was the actual target of the operation, one of the sources said. A friend of Dugina also told the Russian state owned news outlet TASS shortly after the explosion that the car she was driving was her father’s.
Just days after Dugina’s death, Russian authorities accused a Ukrainian woman of remotely detonating explosives planted in Dugina’s Toyota Land Cruiser Prado, and then driving through the Pskov region and into Estonia to escape.
Oleksii Danylov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security Council, immediately denied the allegation. “We have nothing to do with the murder of this lady – this is the work of the Russian special services,” he said in August. Zelensky adviser Mykhailo Podolyak also said at the time that the Russian accusation reflected the “fictional world” the Russian government is operating in.
Dugina, who was 29 when she was killed, was a public figure and frequently appeared as a commentator on Russian TV networks.
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