• State media say that Darya Dugina died when her car caught fire 
• Darya Dugina, was a well-known journalist 
• The Russian government hasn’t said anything official about it yet

It is said that the daughter of a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin was killed near Moscow. State media say that Darya Dugina died when her car caught fire while she was driving home. It’s not clear if her father, the Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, who is known as “Putin’s brain,” was the intended target of an attack.

People think that Mr. Dugin is close to the Russian president because he is a well-known ultranationalist ideologue. Russian news outlet 112 says that the two were supposed to go home from an event on Saturday evening in the same car, but Mr. Dugin decided at the last minute to go home without his daughter. Unverified video posted on Telegram seems to show Mr. Dugin looking shocked as emergency workers arrive at the burning wreck of a car.

The Russian government hasn’t said anything official about it yet. Even though Ms. Dugina’s father doesn’t work for the government, he is a close friend of the Russian president and has been called “Putin’s Rasputin.” Darya Dugina, who was the philosopher’s daughter, was a well-known journalist and commentator who backed the Russian invasion. She was given a ban by the UK government earlier this year. The 30-year-old was accused of spreading “disinformation” online about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Alexander Dugin’s ultranationalist writings influenced Vladimir Putin’s worldview and are tied to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The ideologue has supported Russia’s assaults on Ukraine and was sanctioned by the US in 2015 for his suspected participation in Moscow’s 2014 Crimea invasion.

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