Russia's NRA Likely Targeted Putin's Close Ally, Not Daughter In Car Explosion: Ex-MP

A former member of Russia's State Duma has claimed that a Russian activist army was likely targeting President Vladimir Putin's "spiritual guide" Aleksander Dugin and not his daughter Darya Dugina in the bombing attack over the weekend.

Darya died Saturday after her Toyota Land Cruiser exploded in Bolshye Vyazemy near Moscow.

In an interview with Russian Latvia-based media agency Meduza, the former member of State Duma Ilya Ponomarev said the National Republican Army of the Russian Federation (NRA) would not have triggered the bomb if they had known that Aleksander Dugin was not in the car.

"I don't think so, but they saw two people getting into the car. And they thought that the second one was Dugin. And who the second person was and what [happened] to him, we don't know," Ponomarev said.

The former State Duma member also clarified that Natalya Vovk, a 43-year-old Ukrainian that the Russian FSB has accused of assassinating Darya, was not the person who carried out the attack. However, he noted that Vovk is "not exactly an outsider."

"When [the FSB's] message appeared, I contacted the people with whom we communicate in Russia. They said, "No, it's not her." She's not exactly an outsider, but she doesn't have, shall we say, immediate significance [in this story]," he said. "I didn't say she had nothing to do with the fact itself. I said that she is not the person who carried out this attack. I say this from the words of people [from the "National Republican Army"] with whom I communicate."

Darya was the daughter of Aleksander, an ultranationalist philosopher said to have helped Putin plan out the invasion of Ukraine. Both Aleksander and his daughter were sanctioned by the U.S. in March in connection to the war in Ukraine.

Darya herself was previously described by the U.S. Treasury Department as the chief editor of the United World International (UWI), an analytical center that published an article that suggested Ukraine would "perish" if it pushed through with plans to join the NATO alliance.

Darya had also been sanctioned by the U.K. for being one of the high-profile contributors of disinformation about Russia's invasion of Ukraine.