Hundreds of Russian politicians bid farewell yesterday to Daria Duguina, daughter of one of the most influential Russian intellectuals, the ultra-nationalist and revitalizer of Eurasianism Alexander Dugin, who at the funeral dismissed his daughter as a martyr and asked that her death serve as a inspiration “in the fight against Ukraine”.
Duguina was killed on Saturday night in a bomb attack on the car in which she was traveling. The Russian counter-espionage services, the FSB, have charged the death of a Ukrainian alleged member of the Azov Battalion who would have fled to Estonia with her twelve-year-old daughter. Kyiv denies any connection to the attack and blames the Russian security services directly.
The coincidence of Duguina's death with the six-month invasion of Ukraine has raised the spirits of the Russian nationalist world, which calls for an intensification of the bombing of Ukrainian cities. “I consider this to be a crime for which there is no forgiveness,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters. "I trust that the investigation will be completed quickly and that there will be no kind of pardon for the organizers of the murder or those who carried it out."
The Dugins chose the Ostankino studios, in the center of Moscow, for hundreds of veteran politicians and the father's travel companions to parade in front of a black and white photograph of the dead 30-year-old girl, known as a journalist and political commentator. .
The father, Alexander Dugin, 60, is known for having revitalized the theory of Eurasianism, which emerged in the collapse of the tsarist empire in 1917, but was frozen during the years of Soviet rule. In the 1990s, Duguin, who had tried his luck unsuccessfully in the world of politics, began to spread it. The writer proposes a Russian empire that serves as a counterpoint to the liberal West and is the first to call for the invasion of Ukraine, understanding that it is the biggest obstacle to its creation.
Links between Putin and Dugin are not proven, but this philosopher and political theorist had a significant success among the military and senior Russian officials bewildered after the fall of the Soviet Union. The influence of these ideas is also perceived in Putin's speeches.
"His tragic death calls on all of us to defend the holy Orthodox Russia, the people and the motherland," said Dugin, dressed entirely in black and visibly affected. "He died for Russia in the motherland and on the battlefront, which is not in Ukraine, but here."
Konstantin Malofeyev, an ultra-nationalist tycoon close to the family, set the tone for many of the tributes that Russian politicians dedicated to the deceased, whom they described as a martyr. “The people who fight against us do not understand that we are not only made up of the people who are alive, but also of the people who lived before us and who will live after us. And we will be stronger with the blood of our martyrs.”
The Russian elite believes that the United States and its allies are using Ukraine as a method to go against Russia, supplying all kinds of weapons to Kyiv.
The leaders of the three main pro-Kremlin parties spoke during the service, calling Duguina a patriot. Leonid Slutski, leader of the LDPR, said that streets and squares should be named after Daria Duguina. "One country, one president, one victory" finished Slutski in his speech.
At the funeral, a message of condolence was also read from the leader of the pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, Sergei Mironov, who heads the Only Russia party, who called for the destruction of the Kyiv regime.
