Dugina and the New York Times

The New York Times posted a short story no other media has been able to confirm fully. It is a sensational claim that Ukraine killed Daria Dugina. According to the Times:

United States intelligence agencies believe parts of the Ukrainian government authorized the car bomb attack near Moscow in August that killed Daria Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist, an element of a covert campaign that U.S. officials fear could widen the conflict.

The United States took no part in the attack, either by providing intelligence or other assistance, officials said. American officials also said they were not aware of the operation ahead of time and would have opposed the killing had they been consulted. Afterward, American officials admonished Ukrainian officials over the assassination, they said.

The closely held assessment of Ukrainian complicity, which has not been previously reported, was shared within the U.S. government last week. Ukraine denied involvement in the killing immediately after the attack, and senior officials repeated those denials when asked about the American intelligence assessment.

Ukraine denied involvement the day it happened. It still denies it. Could they have been behind it? It makes no sense. Even unnamed American sources say this. This was a target without military value.

On the day of the attack, Ilya Ponomarev took responsibility for the National Republican Army (NRA). He talked to the Kyiv Independent on this. On August 31, this appeared in the Guardian:

“This action, like many other partisan actions carried out on the territory of Russia in recent months, was carried out by the National Republican Army (NRA),” Ponomarev said. He was speaking in a 7pm broadcast on February Morning, a Russian-language opposition TV channel he launched in Kyiv earlier this year.

He added: “A momentous event took place near Moscow last night. This attack opens a new page in Russian resistance to Putinism. New — but not the last.”

The blast killed Darya Dugina, the 29-year-old daughter of the Russian political commentator and far-right ideologue Alexander Dugin, both of whom had been sanctioned by the UK and US for acting to destabilise Ukraine.

Ponomarev said partisans inside Russia were ready to conduct further similar attacks against high-profile Kremlin-connected targets, including officials, oligarchs and members of Russia’s security agencies.

So let’s look at this from military goals. Why kill Alexander Dugin? This is the only point of agreement that he was the target. Yes, he is a nationalist. Yes, his ideology of Eurasianism is the philosophy of empire.

One of his books is assigned reading at the Russian War College, but he is far better known outside Russia than inside Russia. He is essential reading if you want to understand Steve Bannon and the MAGA phenomena. Inside Russia, he is somewhat isolated from the system.

However, he is a good target as a reveal party for a shadowy group inside Russia that is part of a loose resistance.

In my view, this story in the New York Times has much more to do with American politics than Ukrainian politics. The Moscow Times described the effect inside Russia very well:

The high-profile assassination — of which Dugin is thought to have been the intended target — has sent shockwaves through the Russian elite, with political experts suggesting it has likely made pro-war pundits and Kremlin supporters fearful for their lives.

“The fact that Dugina was an ordinary political commentator expands the geography of fear — pro-Kremlin speakers will understand the war is not an abstraction and it threatens them personally,” political analyst Abbas Gallyamov told The Moscow Times.

In a statement carried by Russian news agencies, the FSB outlined Monday its version of how the attack was carried out by Ukrainian intelligence.

According to the FSB, Vovk arrived in Russia last month and rented an apartment in the same building where Dugina lived. She supposedly tailed Dugina in a Mini Cooper using a series of different license plates, fleeing to neighboring Estonia after the killing took place.

It also gave us a fantastical story that involved a mother with a 12-year-old who escaped. The assassination has been followed by other less spectacular attacks by the NRA. Today, for example, they lost a cell:

We’ve received a message from the National Republican Army. The NRA command confirms the information about the death of the fighters of their cell in Kabardino-Balkaria. NRA Report On September 25, Damir’s Autonomous Group (Damir and his colleague) worked on mining the railroad tracks on the border of Kabardino-Balkaria and North Ossetia.

A military echelon was expected to pass. The detonation device was assembled from publicly available materials, the guys developed the electric initiators (detonators) on their own. In the area of the mission, the group was discovered and tried to detain a police patrol. An armed rebuff was given, a battle ensued. The police called the FSB special forces to help. In a firefight, NRA soldiers killed at least two of Putin’s punishers. Both of our comrades-in-arms died in this battle. Eternal memory to the heroes! Their courage deserves this memory!

Then there is the effort of CNN to get a comment. Their story has this:

But the intelligence finding, first reported by the New York Times, would seem to corroborate elements of the Russian authorities’ findings that the car bombing was “pre-planned.” Russia had accused Ukrainian nationals of being responsible for the attack, which Ukraine had strongly denied in the aftermath of the explosion.

Asked to comment, a Ukrainian defense intelligence official told CNN Wednesday evening following publication of the latest reports that their agency had no new information on Dugina’s death. Shortly after her death, the same official had told CNN that Ukraine had nothing to do with it.

The National Security Council, CIA and State Department declined to comment.

But the most notable piece of this is the Washington Post. Usually, stories broken by either paper involve the shaking of the trees, as it were, by the other. There is nothing in the Washington Post.

Or rather, the newest is a month old as of this writing. So until we know more, call me a skeptic on this New York Times scoop.

To be honest, the Times piece lacks details, including motive. The Moscow Times has far more motive, which is a terror to the elites.

Some of my readers may think I am stubborn. But in reality, the Dugins have no military value. If you want to make a mess internally, which the NRA does, and we know precious little of them because they work in cell structure, the Dugin’s make sense.

If you want to get darker, the FSB makes sense too. This has also been suggested, even inside Russia. In particular, General SVR went into the occult motives of this soon after the assassination. While they deal mostly in dangles, that particular one fits Russian history to a T.

I suspect that we might find out what the truth is here after the war. Perhaps by then, there will be. no interest in this either. Since I suggested American politics and all these are unnamed sources, there are corners of the government that want to slow down the transfer of weapons to Ukraine and who are still in the realist school, fearing Russia needs a way out of the major crisis they got themselves into.