Aleksandr Dugin calls for Russia to punish Ukraine for his daughter’s death.
The outspoken Russian ultranationalist Aleksandr Dugin called on Monday for revenge against Ukraine and for Russia to push on in its invasion, in his first comments since a car bombing killed his daughter.
The Russian authorities on Monday blamed Ukraine for organizing the killing of his daughter, Daria Dugina, on Saturday on a highway in an affluent district outside of Moscow.
Mr. Dugin, who Russian media reports said was driving in a separate car behind his daughter when the blast went off, said she had been “brutally killed by an explosion in front of my eyes.”
He said the attack was an “act of terror” that had been “carried out by the Nazi Ukrainian regime,” repeating the Kremlin’s false description of Ukraine as a Nazi state.
“Our hearts yearn for more than just revenge or retribution,” Mr. Dugin said in a statement issued by an associate, the ultraconservative business magnate Konstantin Malofeev. “We only need our victory. My daughter laid her maiden life on her altar. So win, please!”
Mr. Dugin has often been described as “Putin’s brain,” although the relationship between the two men is opaque and, some analysts say, overstated. But Mr. Dugin has been one of the most visible proponents of the idea of an imperial Russia at the helm of a “Eurasian” civilization locked in an existential conflict in the West.
A leading advocate for the conquest of Ukraine, he recently has urged the Kremlin to escalate its assault.
Ms. Dugina shared many of her father’s views, appearing frequently on state television to promote the idea of an imperialist and aggressive Russia. Although she was not well known in Russia beyond ultranationalist and imperialist circles, she also played a role in building ties between Russia and Europe’s far right.
Last month, the British government imposed sanctions on Ms. Dugina, citing her as a “frequent and high-profile contributor of disinformation in relation to Ukraine.” The United States imposed sanctions on her in March, describing her as the chief editor of an English-language disinformation website owned by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian oligarch known as “Putin’s chef.”
