The possibility of a partisan movement in Russia

Speculations as to who exactly killed the propagandist Daria Dugina, daughter of Alexander Dugin, a well-known far-right philosopher and ideologue of the war with Ukraine continue in Russia. There are different versions as to who was the main target of the assassination: Daria herself or her father. According to the official version of the FSB (Russia's Federal Security Service), which appeared on Monday, it was Dugin's daughter who was the target, and "the crime was prepared and committed by the Ukrainian secret services." Its executor, according to the Chekists, is a citizen of Ukraine, Natalia Vovk, who fled to Estonia after the murder.

Numerous versions

According to the FSB, the woman entered Russia with her 12-year-old daughter on July 23. She rented an apartment in Moscow in the same building where Daria lived, and on the day of the murder she visited the Tradition festival with her daughter, after which the assassination attempt took place. After that, the woman hastily left Russia. Russian media also claim that Vovk served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine or even in the Azov regiment. Azov itself refutes these allegations.

It is not known how much any FSB reports can be trusted, given that for 8 years since the annexation of Crimea, the Russian security forces have been intensively creating myths about the so-called “Crimean saboteurs” in order to justify the repression of Crimean Tatars and other residents of the peninsula who oppose the occupation. However, in this case, the talk is still about a real, not a fictional murder.

Interestingly, on the eve of the appearance of the official version, the National Republican Army, which declared itself a new Russian partisan movement, took responsibility for the assassination attempt on Dugin and the death of his daughter. The Movement declared Vladimir Putin "a usurper of power and a war criminal", and Russian officials, businessmen and security officials associated with him – accomplices of the usurper and subject to liquidation. Exiled Russian opposition politician Ilya Ponomarev, who lives in Kyiv, said that activists from the partisan organization contacted him prior to the assassination attempt.

At the same time, a number of Ukrainian and Russian commentators put forward a conspiracy theory that the FSB itself tried to eliminate Dugin in order to justify repressions in Russia, or vice versa, in order to stage a coup in the country through terror. Russian propagandists also practice conspiracy theories. For example, former spy Andrey Bezrukov assures that the British intelligence services are behind the murder of Dugina, and without their consent, the "Ukrainians" would never have dared to organize a terrorist attack in the Moscow region. In this regard, he calls for increased nuclear blackmail, following the example of North Korea.

Problem for the FSB

In fact, it is quite difficult to say who exactly was behind the death of Daria Dugina, especially considering that both Russia and Ukraine are involved not only in direct armed confrontation, but also in the most brutal information war. However, the version about the “sacred victim created by the FSB” seems extremely unlikely to me.

First, the Russian intelligence services do not need to carry out such an operation in order to justify the repression. Based on the new laws on “fakes” against the Russian army, repressions are already being carried out in Russia, and it’s obvious that they will become even more massive as social media monitoring technologies improve. In addition, as already noted, numerous fakes about “Ukrainian saboteurs,” which appeared long before the start of a full-scale invasion, show that in the case when the FSB needs to create a pretext for repression, in recent years it prefers to create the illusion of successfully preventing terrorist attacks.

In this case, the very fact that the murder took place in the Moscow region, so close to the residences of top Russian officials, is nothing more than a failure of the FSB. A successful assassination attempt has become an indicator of their impotence, and therefore will inevitably increase panic in society, which is completely unnecessary for the authorities. Moreover, any successful operation of the enemy immediately gives rise to a lot of imitators and inspires other people to fight. Such a scenario is extremely undesirable for the FSB, given that for at least the last 10 years, the secret service unit designed to fight terrorism has been mainly engaged in reprisals against dissidents and has lost the ability to fight real terror.

The war goes to the territory of Russia

I also consider the version that an underground group within the Russian government operates in this way is implausible. First, the Russian security forces see the collapse of the Putin regime as a personal threat, since in this case they will most likely have to take responsibility for all their crimes. Secondly, if such a group within the government existed, it would be engaged in the liquidation of much more serious figures. There was no point in liquidating Daria Dugina or even her father for such a group. Moreover, the counter-terrorism measures that will obviously be taken after this assassination attempt will make more serious actions impossible.

As for the so-called “Ukrainian trace”, it’s clear that nothing can be ruled out in a war situation. Both Daria and her father were active propagandists and ideologues of the attack on Ukraine, and it’s quite possible that it was their own calls to “kill” that found their embodiment in this way. However, in my opinion, such professional work could not have been carried out by people from outside without a good agent network in the field. Therefore, I consider the version of the emerging partisan movement to be quite real.

Here we can also recall the arsons of military enlistment offices and recruiting offices, also carried out by the Russians. Judging by indirect data, a fairly large number of people in Russia actually oppose the war, and most of Russians are trying to ignore the war and live “as before,” supporting the authorities solely out of conformism. In such an atmosphere, such actions of intimidation will lead not so much to “rallying the population,” as propagandists dream of, but to an increase in the level of anxiety, which in this situation works against the Kremlin.

Kseniya Kirillova – expert of the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and the Jamestown Foundation, USA    –    especially for Turan