The U.S. intelligence community believes the car bombing that killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of prominent Russian politician Alexander Dugin, was approved by elements of the Ukrainian government, sources briefed on the information told CNN.
The US was not aware of the plan in advance, according to the sources, and it is still unclear who exactly the US believes signed off on the assassination. It is also unclear whether the US intelligence community believes that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky knew about the plot or authorized it.
But the intelligence agency’s finding, first reported by The New York Times, appears to corroborate elements of Russian authorities’ findings that the car bombing was “premeditated.” Russia had blamed Ukrainian nationals for the attack, which Ukraine had blamed after the explosion.
Reached for comment, a Ukrainian intelligence official told CNN Wednesday afternoon after the latest reports were published that their agency had no new information on Dugina’s death. Shortly after her death, the same official told CNN that Ukraine had nothing to do with it.
The National Security Council, the CIA and the State Department declined to comment.
US intelligence officials believe Dugina was driving her father’s car the night she was killed and that her father was the real target of the operation, one of the sources said. Dugin is a Russian ultranationalist and philosopher who has been a staunch supporter of Russia’s war in Ukraine. A friend of Dugina also told Russian state news agency TASS shortly after the explosion that the car she was driving was her father’s.
Days after Dugina’s death, Russian authorities accused a Ukrainian woman of remotely detonating explosives planted in Dugina’s Toyota Land Cruiser Prado and then driving to the Pskov region and Estonia to escape.
Oleksii Danylov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security Council, immediately denied the claim. “We have nothing to do with the murder of this lady – this is the work of the Russian special services,” he said in August. Zelensky’s adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, also said at the time that the Russian charge reflected the “fantasy world” in which the Russian government operates.
Information surrounding Ukraine’s involvement, if accurate, would mark a bold expansion of Ukraine’s covert operations to target a well-known political figure just outside Moscow.
To date, Ukrainian strikes inside Russia have been largely limited to attacks on fuel depots and military bases in cities along the Russian-Ukrainian border, such as Belgorod. However, the US does not have good visibility into all of Ukraine’s planned strikes, sources told CNN.
A Ukrainian official told CNN that the US intelligence community’s findings were not mentioned during a meeting between US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Zelensky’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak in Istanbul earlier this week. It’s unclear if the issue was raised most recently by President Joe Biden in a phone call with Zelensky on Tuesday.
A spokesman for the National Security Council declined to comment.
Dugina, who was 29 when she was killed, was a public figure in her own right and often appeared as a commentator on Russian television networks promoting anti-Western, nationalist narratives.
As CNN previously reported, Dugina also maintained an English- and Turkish-language website called United World International, which was part of a larger propaganda effort known as “Project Lakhta.” The State Department has accused Project Lakhta of using online “trolls” to interfere in the US election.
The US imposed sanctions on both Dugin and Dugina after Russia invaded in February, accusing them of spreading propaganda and acting to destabilize Ukraine.
This story has been updated with additional reports on Wednesday.
