The shocking assassination of the 29-year-old political commentator Darya Dugina by a car bomb on a highway near Moscow on Aug. 20 has been drawn into the larger narrative of Russia's war with Ukraine, now entering its seventh month.
Russia accuses Ukraine of being behind the attack, raising the specter of retaliatory attacks by Russia. Ukraine denies any involvement.
Dugina was the daughter of Alexander Dugin, an influential nationalist thinker who has many admirers in the global far right. It seems possible that he was the intended target since he reportedly switched cars at the last minute. After the explosion, a friend of Dugina's told the Russian state news agency TASS the following, as reported in a CNN story: "Dasha (Darya) drives another car, but she drove his car today, and Alexander went separately."
Dugina was herself a rising star of the nationalist right, propagating her father's neo-imperialist world view. For example, in September 2021 she published an article citing the work of Nazi jurist Karl Schmitt on the concept of Großraum (Greater realm), defending the idea that a leading power such as Russia should rule over neighboring territories.
Much of the media, including the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, is describing her father as a "Putin ally" -- or even as "Putin's brain," the intellectual architect of Putinism. Others argue that this exaggerates Dugin's influence, pointing out that he has never held an official government position and does not appear to have a direct personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "The two men have never been photographed together," The Guardian reported.
While some nationalists condemn Putin for launching a war against a fellow Slavic people, Dugin is among those nationalists who criticize Putin for not pursuing the war against Ukraine more aggressively. His most recent article -- likely written before the car bombing and published on a nationalist website on Aug. 21, the day after his daughter's death -- calls for regime change in Russia, arguing that the present system cannot survive more than six months.
Dugin complains that ordinary Russians are going about their daily lives "as if nothing was happening," and urged Putin to step up the war in Kyiv against the "Atlanto-Nazi regime," a phrase coined by Dugin to claim Zelensky is a Nazi and a Western puppet. He ridiculed the Kremlin's concerns about managing the Russian presidential election in 2024, suggesting it should be postponed. He concluded ominously: "Let the old regime bury its dead. A new Russian time is coming. Relentlessly."