“The murder of journalist Darya Dugina has been solved, it was prepared by the Ukrainian special services, by a citizen of Ukraine,” TASS reported, citing Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), which named a lady because the perpetrator and stated she had fled to Estonia after the assault.
“We have nothing to do with the murder of this lady — this is the work of the Russian special services,” stated Oleksii Danylov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security Council, in an interview on Ukrainian tv Monday.
“I emphasize once again that our special services have nothing to do with this,” he stated.
Dugina, the editor of a Russian disinformation web site, died after a bomb planted in a automobile she was driving went off within the outskirts of Moscow on Saturday night.
The FSB stated that the assailant was a Ukrainian girl who arrived in Russia on July 23 along with her younger daughter, TASS reported. The pair attended a pageant on Saturday close to Moscow the place Dugina was a visitor of honor.
“The criminals used a Mini Cooper car to monitor the journalist,” TASS reported, citing the FSB, including that the girl had rented an condominium in Moscow in the identical constructing the place Dugina lived.
After remotely detonating explosives planted in Dugina’s Toyota Land Cruiser Prado, the FSB stated the girl and her daughter drove via the Pskov area to Estonia, roughly a 12-hour journey.
CNN can not independently confirm the FSB claims cited by the TASS report.
Estonia’s Police and Border Guard stated Monday it solely shares cross-border motion info “in cases as determined by the law” and never due to Russian accusations within the media.
The company’s media consultant Ragne Keisk additionally informed CNN in an electronic mail that the border pressure had “not received any formal information or request from the Russian authorities on this topic.”
The Estonian Foreign Ministry stated it couldn’t remark and directed inquiries to the nation’s Justice Ministry and Border Guard.
Mykhailo Podolyak, a key adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, stated on Monday that the FSB accusation was reflective of the “fictional world” during which Russian propaganda thrives.
“Ru-propaganda lives in a fictional world: [Ukrainian] woman and her 12-year-old child were ‘assigned’ responsible for blowing up the car of propagandist Dugina. Surprisingly, they did not find the ‘Estonian visa’ on the spot,” he stated on Twitter.
Ukrainian Defense Intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov additionally rejected Russia’s claims on Monday as “fake.”
“It is a fake that Ukraine is involved in this. It is a fake that the National Guard of Ukraine is involved in these events. The National Guard is fulfilling its legal tasks at the territory of Ukraine,” Yusov stated in a press release.
Yusov then redirected accountability for the blast again on Russia, saying: “This looks more like sorting things out within Russia. Both Dugin and his daughter are marginal characters and not a point of interest to Ukraine.”
Dugina’s father, Alexander Dugin, is a distinguished Russian nationalist credited with being the architect or “spiritual guide” of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Both father and daughter have been sanctioned by the United States and the United Kingdom for performing to destabilize Ukraine.
The UK, in a July submitting by the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation, known as Dugina a “frequent and high-profile contributor of disinformation in relation to Ukraine and the Russian invasion of Ukraine on various online platforms.”
Putin on Monday despatched his condolences to Dugina’s household, calling her loss of life “a vile, cruel crime.”
In a press release printed on the Kremlin’s Telegram channel, Putin stated: “A journalist, scientist, philosopher, war correspondent, she honestly served the people, the Fatherland, she proved by deed what it means to be a patriot of Russia.”
CNN’s Oleksandra Ochman, Teele Rebane and Victoria Butenko contributed to this report.
