Truth behind killing of Darya Dugina: Fingers pointing at Kiev now shifting toward Israel

By Arvin Qaemian

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, ignited a catastrophic war that is still remembered as the "Great War".

The assassination of Darya Dugina, a twenty-nine-year-old Russian political commentator, and the daughter of the most renowned Russian nationalist philosopher, Alexander Dugin, did not spark the already raging hostilities in Ukraine. However, according to Robert Wright, an eminent political pundit, Darya's murder could further escalate the Ukraine conflict by sparking widespread outrage and a national desire for revenge.

Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for Russia's Foreign Ministry, said last Monday that Ukraine's role in "terrorist actions" is not a coincidence, as investigations implicated Kyiv in the murder of Darya Dugina. "The West should understand that the involvement of the Kyiv regime in terrorist activities is not an accident or an isolated example. It is not even a behavioral norm. Everything is much more serious. This is a nationalist mentality combined with terrorism as a tool for implementing criminal ideology," Mrs. Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel.

The Kremlin released a communiqué in which President Putin offered his condolences to the Dugin's family, saying, "a heinous, cruel crime brought cut tragically short the life of Daria Dugina, a brilliant and talented woman with a truly Russian heart. As a journalist, scientist, philosopher, and war correspondent, she sincerely served the people and the fatherland, illustrating by her deeds what it means to be a Russian patriot."

There has been considerable conjecture concerning the murderer's identity and motivations, although nothing is known for certain.

According to Le Figaro, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB)’s investigations indicated that a mother allegedly serving in the Ukrainian secret service had slipped into Moscow on orders from Kyiv. The FSB disclosed that Darya's vehicle was planted with an explosive device by a Ukrainian veteran spy, identified as "Natalia Vovk, 43 years." After detonating the bomb using a remote control, the culprit and her daughter escaped overland to Estonia.

The FSB further added that "to organize Dugin's murder and obtain information about his lifestyle, she [the assassin] and her daughter rented an apartment in Moscow in the block where the victim lived."

The tragedy of this murder is made all the more poignant as Darya was not the target of the assassination operation. According to preliminary investigations by the FSB, Darya's father was the primary target of the fatal car bombing on Saturday evening, August 20, where both father and daughter participated in a day-long cultural festival on the outskirts of Moscow.

However, in a dramatic twist of fate, Mr. Dugin took a different car at the last minute. Soon, a heartbreaking footage surfaced on social media platforms, which showed Mr. Dugin gripping his head in anguish as Darya's vehicle was engulfed in fire at around 9.00 p.m. local time.

Nevertheless, Mykhailo Podolyak, a key counselor to the Ukrainian president, has emphatically rejected his country's involvement in the assassination of Darya Dugina.

Alexander Dugin is an ultra-orthodox ascetic and the most prominent ideologue of Eurasianism in recent decades. The Western media have given him different and sometimes opprobrious epithets: "Putin's brain," "Russia's new Rasputin," and "the guru of Slavic imperialism."

Following a similar course as her father, Darya spent a year studying philosophy in France. Her master's thesis was centered on Plato. Darya began to cooperate more extensively with her father in her twenties and committed all of her time to political campaigns and as a fervent nationalist. She was infatuated with her father's ideas, as outlined in his best-known work, "The Fourth Political Theory", and gradually she mirrored her father's ideology. She used the pen name "Darya Platonova" for her writings. Both father and daughter have been sanctioned by the United States due to their ideas.

Alexander Dugin has been viewed as the most salient political strategist in Moscow who pushed Putin closer to Iran, hoping to resurrect Eastern Spiritualism as opposed to Western liberalism.

Dugin argues that Eastern Orthodox Christianity has more affinity with Shia Islam than Protestantism or Catholicism. Additionally, Dugin was quoted as saying: "The annual Arbaeen procession—which marks the end of the 40-day mourning period for Imam Hussein's [PBUH] martyrdom in 680 AD— conjures an apocalyptic event and serves as a prelude to a complete global transformation. With its liberal and capitalist ideologies, the modern world has reached its end and accomplished nothing for humanity but creating calamities."

Dugin hopes that unity among Eurasian nations can ultimately contribute to forming a strong Eurasia, or as Sir Halford J. Mackinder described it, the world's Heartland, vis-à-vis Anglo-Saxon Atlanticism.

When General Qassem Soleimani was assassinated in an American terrorist attack, Dugin hailed him as a real hero, saying, "He was the hero of the struggle not only for the interests of Iran and the Shia world but also the hero of the entire resistance front against the hegemony of [Western] imperialism. General Soleimani's assassination was a catastrophic disaster for Russia's military strategists."

But there remains a tantalizing question to be answered. Who killed Darya Dugina?

Regardless of Moscow's anti-Kyiv inflammatory rhetoric and the official Russian accusations, Ukrainian officials are cognizant of the fact that it is not in their best interest to engage in the game of state-sponsored assassinations since Russia's intelligence capabilities are much beyond those of Kyiv, as Russians can retaliate with extreme severity.

On the other hand, it would be utterly absurd to assume that Darya's murder was an inside job since Moscow does not need the death of an obscure academician to rouse Russian patriotism or, even worse, demonstrate its security vulnerability.

Therefore, many observers began to suspect a theory that lurks in Mossad's dark operation rooms.

It is probable that the dramatic death of Darya was an Israeli warning to the Kremlin to stay away from Iran's regional allies, Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip and Yemen's Ansarullah Movement [also known as Houthis].

To substantiate this theory, one can mention a recent visit by a Houthi delegation to Moscow. The head of the Yemeni delegation and its chief negotiator, Mohammed Abdul Salam, indicated in a press release on Thursday, August 11, 2022, that fundamental changes have emerged in the Russian political perspective and that the Kremlin realized that Yemen could be strategically influential without elaborating on the nature of those changes.

The Kremlin has embarked on a campaign to build alliances with new international players, such as the Ansarullah Movement, to thwart the mounting Western pressures that it has faced since late February due to its military intervention in Ukraine.  In addition, Moscow seeks to engage in sabre-rattling against persistent American efforts to enhance crude oil production by obstructing the passage of oil tankers via the Bab al-Mandab Strait. So, the purported motivation for Russia's incipient ties with the Sana'a-based government might be a latent desire to set up a naval base on the coasts of the Red Sea.

Moreover, in the past six months, at least two Hamas delegations have visited Moscow, suggesting that the Russians have partially abounded their decades-long policy of neutrality regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict.

According to the Hebrew-language newspaper Maariv, in a telephone call with Putin, the president of Israel, Isaac Herzog, expressed his grave concern about a Russian weapons shipments to Palestinian armed resistance organizations.

The Zionist regime has a long and sordid history of brutal assassination campaigns against its enemies. In the case of Darya Dugina, she might be among the latest victims of Mossad's terror machine, as fingers point at a moribund regime which is desperately trying to stop its doomsday clock from ticking.

"Russia" and "our empire" were among the first words we taught her as a child, said Alexander Dugin, in a quavering voice at his daughter’s funeral.

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