Russia’s counterintelligence agency on Monday claimed that the car bomb that killed the daughter of Vladimir Putin’s ally Alexander Dugin was planted by a female Ukrainian spy who then fled to Estonia.
Officials with FSB have identified Darya Dugina’s alleged assassin as 43-year-old Natalia Vovk, who they said was acting as part of a criminal plot “orchestrated and perpetrated by Ukrainian special services,” according to Russian state news agency TASS.
FSB published a video compilation allegedly that opens with Vovk entering Russia in her grey Mini Cooper, which sports plates issued by the Kremlin-backed separatist Donetsk People’s Republic. A second portion of the video appears to show Vovk entering the apartment building where Dugina lived in Moscow.
A doorbell camera offers a clear view of the woman’s face as she stands in front of the front door, then answers a call on her phone.
The final portion of the video shows Vovk’s Mini Cooper — now featuring Ukrainian plates — being subjected to an inspection on the Russian-Estonian border following Dugina’s killing.
A female border agent instructs in Russian Vovk to open all the doors in her car and the glove compartment, and to remove her luggage from the trunk.
Vovk, wearing a pink tracksuit and dark sunglasses, appears to comply with the inspection, after which she is allowed to be on her way.
Ukraine was quick to deny any involvement in the 29-year-old Dugina’s killing, with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s chief adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, declaring: “We are not a criminal state, unlike Russia, and definitely not a terrorist state.”
Russia likewise denied carrying out a “false flag” attack on Dugina, whose father — dubbed “Putin’s brain” — had issued a statement online just hours before the explosion criticizing the Kremlin strongman and advocating for “internal transformations.”
Dugina, a state TV pundit and staunch Putin ally, was returning from a cultural festival on the outskirts of Moscow that she had attended with her father when her SUV exploded, killing her.
Her father, who some have suggested may have been the intended target of the killing, had left the festival in a separate car. He was filmed at the scene of the blast appearing in a state of shock.
According to FSB, the prime suspect in the assassination, Vovk, had arrived in Russia on July 23 with her 12-year-old daughter, Sophia Shaban, and moved into the same apartment building in Moscow where Dugina lived to gather information about the Kremlin propagandist’s lifestyle and habits.
TASS reported, citing official sources, that Vovk followed Dugina around in a Mini Cooper with Kazakh license plates.
On Saturday, Vovk and her daughter allegedly attended the musical and literary festival “Tradition,” where Dugina was a guest of honor.
After allegedly detonating Dugina’s Toyota Land Cruiser Prado with a remote-controlled device, Vovk and her daughter fled to neighboring Estonia in their Mini Cooper, now displaying Ukrainian plates, according to the FSB.
Russian law enforcement officials said they will be calling for Vovk’s extradition.
Estonia’s foreign ministry declined to comment and there was no immediate comment from Estonia’s interior ministry or police and border guard service.
This is a very sad thing; it is an action both crass and apparently desperate. Did not Putin’s henchmen do this type of murder to the hero:
Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was shot dead in her Moscow apartment building after having spent years criticizing Vladimir Putin and the Second Chechen War?
This elevated nothing and possibly will continue the carnage with prejudice and endurance.
Cultural figures and media commentator’s must be allowed their expressions. Otherwise iron clad repression will come down hard like a ton of bricks on all dialogue and opinions.
All’s fair in love and War … go screw yourself Putin!!!
Soros or schwabb pick one, destabilizing to create war…
BULL SHIT. THIS CUNT IS A CIA RAT