The Russian secret service FSB said on Tuesday it had evidence that the attack on Darya Dugina was carried out by Natalya Vovk, a Ukrainian who had fled to Estonia after the attack. She would have used different license plates. Previously, she would have rented an apartment for a short time in the house where Dugina lived.
The statement by the FSB is at odds with that of Ponomarjov, who was a member of the Russian parliament until 2016. He was expelled from the country after being the only parliamentarian to vote against the annexation of Crimea. According to him, the attack was perpetrated by an underground resistance group in Russia, the National Republican Army (NRA). The intention was also to get rid of the father of Darya Dugina, a staunch supporter of the war in Ukraine.
The NRA handed him a statement calling Putin an “illegitimate ruler” and a “war criminal”. Putin’s associates, senior military personnel and Russian businessmen were advised to cut ties with him. Otherwise they will be “destroyed,” the group threatened.
That threat seems boastful, given that no one has heard of the underground movement before. But Ponomaryov says the NRA has provided compelling evidence of acts of resistance it has recently carried out in Russia.
Various resistance groups
According to him, there are currently several resistance groups active in Russia, of both the extreme left and the right. As an example, he pointed to the wave of arson attacks at army recruitment offices. And only recently in the Volgograd region, a number of members of the underground “Russian Volunteer Corps” are said to have been killed in an operation, but Ponomarjov gave no further details.
Ponomarjov says he supports several groups through his organization ‘RosPartizan’ (Russian Partisan), which he founded several months ago. For example, RosPartizan said he recently helped a number of resistance fighters to escape from Russia after they came under the sights of the FSB.
For the time being, the extent of the underground resistance seems limited in any case. When there are political attacks in Russia, they are often directed against critics of President Putin, such as opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who narrowly survived an attempt by the FSB to poison him. Other opposition figures, including Vladimir Kara-Moerza, have also been victims of (failed) poisoning attempts.
Blame for secret service
Whatever may be true of Ponomarjov’s claims, they certainly arouse much anger in Moscow. The head of the Russian propaganda organization Rossotrudnichestvo, Yevgeny Primakov, offered a reward for video footage showing Ponomariov crawling around with “broken limbs” and asking for forgiveness “while spitting out his teeth.”
The bombing of Dugina, near Moscow, is an embarrassment to the FSB, once headed by President Putin. That is probably also the explanation for the surprising speed with which the secret service came up with the solution to the mysterious attack on Dugina. An attack by Ukraine is also less painful for the FSB than the idea that a partisan network is operating in Russia.
Dugin himself is convinced that Kyiv is responsible for the attack on his daughter. He made this clear in a press statement in which he reacted to her death. “Our hearts are not only yearning for revenge and retribution, that would be too little, un-Russian,” he wrote. “We just need the Victory. On its altar my daughter laid her girlhood. So get the win, I beg you! May she now inspire the sons of our Fatherland to an act of heroism’.