Putin ally Alexander Dugin says his daughter told him she felt ‘like a warrior’ and a ‘heroine’ before she died in a car bombing Russia blamed on the Ukraine.
Darya Dugina, 29, attended a festival on Saturday night before a remote-controlled explosive device was planted in her 4×4 exploded while she was driving on the outskirts of Moscow.
The car burst into flames and video from the scene shows Mr Dugin with his hands clutching his head in horror.
The writer and philosopher is credited with being the architect or “spiritual guide” of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and is sometimes referred to as “Putin’s mastermind”.
He is widely believed to be the intended target of the bombing that Moscow blamed on Ukrainian special services.
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Russian media quoted witnesses as saying that the 4×4 belonged to Mr. Dugin and that he had decided at the last minute to travel in another vehicle.
Speaking at a farewell ceremony for his daughter in Moscow on Tuesday, Mr Dugin said: ‘She was not afraid. The last words she said during our conversation at the Tradition festival were ‘father , I feel like a warrior, I feel like a hero I want to be one, I don’t want a different fate.
“‘I want to be with my people, with my country’.”
Mr Dugin also said his daughter ‘died for the people, died for Russia’.
His voice cracked as he continued, “The enormous price we have to pay can only be justified by the highest achievement, our victory.
“She lived for victory and she died for victory. Our Russian victory, our truth, our Orthodox faith, our state.”
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He made the remarks as hundreds of people attended the ceremony honoring Ms Dugina, who was a commentator on a Russian nationalist TV channel, at the Ostankino TV Center in Moscow.
Mr Dugin had previously urged the Kremlin to step up operations in Ukraine after his daughter’s death.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday sent a letter of condolence to Mr Dugin and his wife, denouncing the “cruel and treacherous murder” and saying that Ms Dugina “honestly served the people and the fatherland, proving what means to be a patriot of Russia with one’s deeds”.
He posthumously awarded Mrs. Dugina the Order of Courage, one of Russia’s highest medals.
Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, reiterated that the country denies involvement in the attack.
He said Monday evening that “our special services have nothing to do with this.”
The FSB accused a Ukrainian citizen, Natalya Vovk, of carrying out the murder after she arrived in Russia in July with her 12-year-old daughter and rented an apartment in the building where Ms Dugina lived in order to follow her.
Natalya Vovk is accused by Russia of being behind the murder
Russia claims Ms Vovk and her daughter were at a nationalist festival which Mr Dugin and his daughter attended just before the murder.
The agency said Ms Vovk had traveled to Estonia after the murder, using a different license plate for her vehicle.
Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu dismissed the Russian claim, saying in televised remarks that “we see this as an example of provocation in a very long series of provocations by the Russian Federation, and we have nothing more to say about it at this time”.
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The car bombing sparked calls from Russian nationalists to respond by stepping up strikes against Ukraine.
Mr. Dugin has been a prominent proponent of the concept of the “Russian World”, a spiritual and political ideology that emphasizes traditional values, the restoration of Russia’s global influence and the unity of all ethnic Russians worldwide.
He helped popularize the concept of “Novorossiya” or “New Russia” which Russia used to justify the 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and its support for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.
