The fatal assassination of the 29-year-old pro-Russian war advocate has created a strong sense of insecurity and vulnerability among Russia’s most prominent and dedicated public pro-warmonger and warmonger, the newspaper said. They realized that they were potential targets and that the Russian government might not be able to protect them, the article said.
Dugina died on Sunday night when her car exploded in an elite Moscow suburb. While it was once Putin’s enemies and critics who feared being shot or poisoned, it is now the Russian leader’s most prominent public allies who are insecure, relying on private bodyguards and other safeguards once morest unseen and unpredictable threats, the newspaper said .
Washington Post: Putin under pressure
“By now it should be clear to everyone that there are no safe places,” pro-Kremlin war reporter Yuri Kotenok tweeted, according to the Washington Post, adding that the Russians might no longer ignore the war. “Moscow is now a frontline city.”
The attack on the war propagandist Dugina might also trigger a new escalation in the war. Putin came under pressure from the assassination, also from Dugina’s grieving father, the right-wing nationalist and imperialist ideologue Alexander Dugin. He is considered one of the ideological fathers of the Ukraine war.
Dugin: We need our victory
Dugin called on the Russians to fight in accordance with his ideology. “Our hearts do not simply thirst for vengeance or vengeance. That would be too small, not Russian,” Dugin told Telegram regarding his confidante, the oligarch Konstantin Malofeev. “We just need our victory. My daughter laid her girlish life on his altar. So please win!”
According to the Washington Post, in addition to the Dugina murder, the Ukrainian attacks on Crimea and the few, but mysterious and unexplained fires and explosions in houses and warehouses also caused unrest in Moscow. They show that the war is not as far away for the average Russian as the Kremlin would like it to be, the newspaper continues.
The Dugina assassination also shows that the implicit contract between Putin’s long term in office and the Russian people is being undermined. This undermines Putin’s creed that he alone stands for security, peace and economic prosperity. In addition to the assassination, this applies in particular to the weakening economy due to western sanctions.
Putin posthumously awards Dugina a medal for bravery
Meanwhile, Russia’s domestic intelligence agency FSB has released a video purporting to show Dugina’s alleged murderer. Several edited recordings in the clip, which lasts around two minutes, are intended to show how the Ukrainian arrives in Russia, enters the house of her alleged victim and leaves the country once more following the crime.
Putin posthumously awarded Dugina the Order of Bravery. According to the Kremlin, her “bravery and dedication in fulfilling her professional task” was honored.
US government: Don’t know who is behind it
The FSB said the assassination was planned by Ukrainian intelligence services. Ukraine said it had nothing to do with the assassination. Sources in the Moscow security apparatus told the TASS agency that the attack was really aimed at the daughter, not the father.
According to the US government, however, it has no precise information regarding the background to the assassination attempt on Dugina. “We don’t really know who was behind this and what the motive might have been,” National Security Council communications director John Kirby told CNN on Monday.
According to the FSB, the perpetrator is a woman from Ukraine who was born in 1979. She traveled to Russia with her eleven or twelve-year-old daughter at the end of July and left for Estonia immediately following the crime. Russian opposition figures doubted the representation of the secret service.
Estonia sees Russian information operation
Estonia’s Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu also rejects the FSB’s claim that the alleged murderer fled to the Baltic EU and NATO country. According to the current assessment of the foreign ministry in Tallinn, this claim is an information operation, said the chief diplomat of the country bordering Russia on Estonian radio on Monday evening.
“We consider this a provocation by the Russian Federation in a very long line of provocations and we have nothing more to say regarding it at the moment,” Reinsalu said. A spokesman for the Estonian Prosecutor General’s Office in Tallinn also told the BNS agency that the agency had not received any inquiries from the Russian side on the subject.
Ukraine sees Russian propaganda
Kyiv had already denied involvement in Dugina’s death at the weekend. On Monday, Ukrainian Presidential Advisor Mykhailo Podoliak reiterated: “Russian propaganda creates a fictional world: a Ukrainian woman and her 12-year-old child have been ‘fixed’ as culprits in the blown up car of propagandist Dugina.” that the suspect presented by the FSB was in some way related to the unit.
