Every new declare over the assault that killed Darya Dugina appears to lift extra questions than it solutions.
On Monday, Russia’s FSB safety service claimed to have cracked the case, publishing data and a video it mentioned confirmed a Ukrainian girl from the nation’s Azov regiment was answerable for the homicide of Dugina, whose father is the far-right ideologue Alexander Dugin.
In response to the FSB, the murderer managed to enter Russia together with her 12-year-old daughter in tow, transfer round undetected whereas often altering the plates on her Mini Cooper, plant and detonate an expert explosive gadget, and depart the nation.
Supposedly, she managed to do all this with out being noticed by Russia’s safety providers till after she had fled, presumably by posing as one of many a whole lot of 1000’s of Ukrainians who’ve both sought refuge in Russia or been forcibly deported from occupied areas of Ukraine.
The FSB’s claims shall be met with excessive scepticism, and Ukraine has strongly denied any involvement within the assault, stating that Dugin was a marginal determine and insisting it doesn’t perform this sort of mission.
However it isn’t unimaginable to think about a motive for Kyiv: Dugina’s demise got here as Ukrainians are more and more taking the battle to Russia in occupied Crimea for the primary time because the invasion in February. Operations equivalent to an audacious plan to lure a bunch of Russian mercenaries to Ukraine two years in the past present that there are these within the Ukrainian providers who prefer to suppose huge.
Moreover, whereas it’s true that Dugin is hardly the Putin-whisperer that some make him out to be, there isn’t a doubt that he does have excessive title recognition each in Russia and the west, and he has made frequent, odious requires violence towards Ukraine and Ukrainians. If the calculation was for a high-profile goal who was nonetheless moderately weak and had minimal safety, Dugin wouldn’t be an illogical selection, assuming that he and never his daughter was the unique supposed goal.
Nevertheless, the pace with which the FSB has provide you with video “proof”, in addition to a number of slightly puzzling points of its story, definitely elevate purple flags. For an company that has failed to unravel quite a few high-profile murders in Russia, together with of Putin critics, the pace of the FSB’s work on this case is as suspicious as its lack of progress elsewhere.
Different variations of occasions floated additionally appear removed from watertight. On Sunday, the previous Russian MP Ilya Ponomarev, now dwelling in exile in Kyiv, claimed that partisans from a hitherto-unknown group referred to as the Nationwide Republican Military had been behind the assault, including an sudden and intriguing dimension to the case. However Ponomarev didn’t present any proof, and plenty of observers have dismissed the declare as a publicity stunt.
Officers in Ukraine have advised the killing was extra more likely to be a “false flag” operation, organised by the Russian state with a view to body Ukraine and supply a justification for additional violence. Actually, it has executed that: propagandists equivalent to Margarita Simonyan of the tv community RT have referred to as for elevated focusing on of Ukraine and Ukrainians within the aftermath.
Nevertheless, it isn’t clear that Russia wanted any pretext to proceed its aggression, and if the entire case was a set-up, it’s one which makes the FSB and Russian state look curiously weak and incompetent.
Within the FSB’s model of occasions, a Ukrainian murderer was in a position to enter Russia, perform a high-profile killing close to the capital after which flee, all with out being apprehended. The FSB footage reveals the supposed murderer wanting icily calm, together with her younger daughter in tow, as she enters and leaves Russia and strikes across the capital.
If true, it’s a surprising FSB failure and, if false, it’s a unusually self-incriminating story to invent.
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