Russian officials paid their respects to Darya Dugina, the daughter of one of Russia’s most prominent nationalist ideologues, at a memorial service on Tuesday, honouring her as a martyr whose death must motivate Russian military fighting in Ukraine.
Dugina, the daughter of ultra-nationalist Alexander Dugin, was killed in a vehicle bomb attack outside Moscow on Saturday. The Russian security service, the FSB, has accused Ukrainian intelligence agencies of orchestrating her death, which Kyiv denies.
As the six-month anniversary of Russia’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine approaches on Wednesday, Dugina’s death has triggered cries for vengeance among Moscow’s political elite. The US Embassy in Kyiv has issued a warning about the heightened potential of Russian military strikes.
‘I regard it as a brutal crime that can never be pardoned,’ Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated.
‘I hope the investigation is completed swiftly, and based on the findings of this investigation, there can be no mercy for the organisers, those who commissioned this, and the criminals,’ he told reporters.
Senior politicians, fellow nationalists, and friends went past Dugina’s dark wooden casket to say farewell, lay flowers, and communicate their sorrow to her parents, who were sat close, inside Moscow’s TV centre.
As sombre music played, a large black and white photograph of the dearly departed woman, 30, who worked as a journalist and nationalist news presenter, hung on a black wall behind her casket.
Her father, Dugin, 60, who has long advocated for the formation of a new Russian empire encompassing countries such as Ukraine, told mourners that his daughter had died for Russia.
‘If her untimely death touched anyone, she would have implored them to preserve sacred (Russian) Orthodoxy, the people, and the Fatherland,’ Dugin, dressed in black and apparently distressed, stated.
‘She died for Russia, on the motherland’s frontline, which is not in Ukraine, but here.’
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