The death of Daria Dugina: The United States believes that elements within the Ukrainian government allowed the assassination near Moscow, sources say

Washington
CNN
–

The US intelligence community believes that A car bomb explosion kills Daria DuginaSources familiar with the intelligence told CNN that the daughter of a prominent Russian political figure, Alexander Dugin, was given permission by elements within the Ukrainian government.

The US was not aware of the plan in advance, according to the sources, and it remains unclear who exactly the US believes signed the assassination. Nor is it clear whether the US intelligence community believes this Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky He was aware of the plot or authorized it.

But intelligence discovery, First reported by the New York Timesappears to corroborate elements of the findings of the Russian authorities that the car bombing was “pre-planned”. Russia He had accused Ukrainian citizens of being responsible for the attack, which Ukraine vehemently denied in the aftermath of the explosion.

In response to a request for comment, a Ukrainian defense intelligence official told CNN Wednesday evening after the publication of the latest reports that their agency had no new information about Dugina’s death. Shortly after her death, the same official told CNN that Ukraine had nothing to do with the matter.

The National Security Council, the CIA and the State Department declined to comment.

One of the sources said that US intelligence officials believe that Dugina was driving her father’s car the night she was killed, and that her father was the actual target of the operation. Dugin is a Russian nationalist and philosopher who was a staunch supporter of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Dugina’s friend also told the state-owned Russian news agency TASS shortly after the explosion that the car she was driving belonged to her father.

A few days after Dugina’s death, Russian authorities charged a Ukrainian woman with detonating a remote explosive planted in a Toyota Land Cruiser Prado in Dugina, and then driving her car through the Pskov region to Estonia to flee.

Oleksiy Danilov, Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security Council, immediately denied the claim. “We have nothing to do with the murder of this lady – this is the work of the Russian special services,” he said said in August. Zelensky’s advisor Mikhailo Podolak also said at the time that the Russian accusation reflected the “imaginary world” in which the Russian government operates.

If the intelligence surrounding Ukraine’s intervention is accurate, it would indicate a bold expansion of Ukraine’s covert operations to target a well-known political figure outside of Moscow.

So far, Ukrainian strikes inside Russia have been largely limited to attacks on fuel depots and military bases in cities along the Russian-Ukrainian border, such as Belgorod. But sources told CNN that the US does not have a good view of all the planned strikes in Ukraine.

A Ukrainian official told CNN that the findings of the US intelligence community were not addressed during a meeting between US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Zelensky’s Chief of Staff Andrei Yermak in Istanbul earlier this week. It is not clear if the issue was recently raised by President Joe Biden in a phone call with Zelensky on Tuesday.

A spokesperson for the National Security Council declined to comment.

Dugina, who was 29 when she was murdered, was a public figure in her own right, often appearing as a commentator on Russian television networks promoting anti-Western nationalist narratives.

Like CNN did Previously mentionedDugina also ran a website in English and Turkish called United World International, which was itself part of a broader advertising effort known as “Project Lakhta”. The State Department accused the Lakhta Project of spreading “trolls” on the Internet to interfere in the US election.

The United States imposed sanctions on both Dugin and Dogina after the Russian invasion in February, accusing them of spreading propaganda and working to destabilize Ukraine.

This story was updated with additional reports Wednesday.