Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has accused a second suspect in the murder of Darya Dugina, who was a Russian political commentator and the daughter of prominent ultranationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin.
“In the course of further investigation, it was established that another member of the Ukrainian sabotage and terrorist group, a citizen of Ukraine … prepared in Moscow the murder of D. Dugina,” the FSB press service said in a statement Monday.
CNN is unable to independently verify the FSB claims of those who perpetrated the killing and is therefore not naming the two suspects at this time. Ukraine has denied any involvement in Dugina’s killing, calling the FSB claims fiction.
According to the FSB, the second suspect provided fake license plates and documents to the first suspect and helped assemble an improvised explosive device in a rented garage in the southwest of Moscow, which was later detonated in the car that Dugina was driving.
The FSB said the second suspect had arrived in Russia on July 30 via Estonia and left Russian territory the day before Dugina’s death on August 20.
What happened: Dugina, the editor of a Russian disinformation website, died after a bomb planted in a car she was driving went off in the outskirts of Moscow earlier in August.
The FSB blamed Ukrainian special services for the murder, saying the first suspect was a Ukrainian woman who arrived in Russia on July 23 with her young daughter, TASS reported. The pair attended a festival on Saturday near Moscow where Dugina was a guest of honor.
After remotely detonating explosives planted in Dugina’s Toyota Land Cruiser Prado, the FSB said the woman and her daughter drove through the Pskov region to Estonia, roughly a 12-hour journey.
“Ru-propaganda lives in a fictional world: [Ukrainian] woman and her 12-year-old child were ‘assigned’ responsible for blowing up the car of propagandist Dugina. Surprisingly, they did not find the ‘Estonian visa’ on the spot,” Mykhailo Podolyak, a key adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said last week on Twitter.
