SBU refuses to comment on Dugina assassination report
Ukraine's Security Service (SBU) has refused to comment on The Washington Post's report that SBU agents were behind the August 2022 car bomb attack that killed Daria Dugina – the daughter of Russian far-right philosopher Aleksandr Dugin.
Details of high-profile special operations can be discussed only after Ukraine's victory in the war against Russia, the SBU’s press service responded.
“All targets hit by the SBU are completely legal,” the agency’s head, Vasyl Malyuk, said in an earlier statement provided to TWP. It did not specifically address targeted killings but Malyuk, who met with top CIA and other U.S. officials in Washington last month, said Ukraine “does everything to ensure that fair punishment will ‘catch up’ with all traitors, war criminals and collaborators.”
SBU operatives installed a hidden compartment in a pet carrier and used it to hide components of a bomb that killed Dugina, The Washington Post reported on Oct. 23, citing security officials with knowledge of the operation.
The cluttered car carrying a mother and her 12-year-old daughter seemed barely worth the attention of Russian security officials as it approached a border checkpoint. But the least conspicuous piece of luggage — a crate for a cat — was part of an elaborate, lethal plot.
At least a dozen Russian operatives, high-ranking collaborators, military officers, and known supporters of the war in the Russian rear, including propagandist Vladlen Tatarsky, have been killed by the SBU and Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence (HUR) over the past 20 months.
Like her father, Dugina was an active propagandist, a vocal supporter of the invasion, justifying Russia's war against Ukraine and advocating genocide against the Ukrainian people. Kremlin propagandists blamed the Ukrainian political leadership for her assassination.
Russian authorities had barely finished clearing the debris when on Aug. 22 the FSB (Russian security service) identified Natalia Vovk (allegedly the Ukrainian Azov Battalion's member) and her pre-teenage daughter Sofia Shaban as prime suspects.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy denied Ukrainian involvement in Dugina's death.
Former State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev said the so-called National Republican Army, which opposes the regime of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, claimed responsibility for Dugina's murder.
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