The killing in Moscow of a hawkish ideologue whose father is a prominent supporter of Vladimir Putin has added a new dimension to tensions over the war in Ukraine. Thirty-year-old Darya Dugina, who died in a car bomb on the outskirts of the Russian capital on Saturday night, shared her father’s ultra-nationalist, anti-western views and his support for Putin’s war in Ukraine, which has killed thousands of civilians and displaced millions.
Her murder has rattled the Russian elite and set off a frenzy of rumour and speculation over the identity and the motive of the killers. Russia’s FSB security service said she had been killed by a Ukrainian woman working for Kyiv’s security agencies who placed the bomb and then fled to Estonia. But that account of events, dismissed by Ukraine and also rejected by Estonia, has done little to dampen speculation, still less recrimination.
Tensions were already high in the days leading up to the Moscow attack, with Kyiv banning big public gatherings this week amid fears that Moscow could carry out a major strike on the city to coincide with Ukraine’s independence day today – which is the six-month anniversary of the start of Russia’s invasion.
The Dugina murder also comes at a point when the war itself appears locked in stalemate, with Ukrainian and Russian forces digging in for the long winter ahead. Public declarations of confidence in their battlefield prospects from Kyiv and Moscow belie distinct concerns in both capitals about the course of the war. Putin is doubtless preoccupied with Russia’s huge casualty list, estimated at up to 60,000, and the total failure of his initial plan to take Kyiv despite Russia’s vast military superiority. It is hard to imagine that there are not serious doubts elsewhere in the regime about a war that Russia is clearly not winning, even if those doubts do not translate into outright internal opposition to Putin. For its part, Kyiv remains anxious to ensure that western support – so important to it on the military, diplomatic and humanitarian fronts – does not weaken as war fatigue sets in and the energy crisis hits home in Europe this winter.
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Of the two capitals, however, it is Kyiv that can take heart from current trends. Large western arms shipments continue to arrive in Ukraine, significantly boosting Ukraine’s long-range arsenal in particular, while ongoing western training of Ukrainian recruits will steadily strengthen Kyiv’s ranks for future counter-offensives such as the one it plans in the city of Kherson in the south. Meanwhile, Russia’s own advances have stalled and a series of spectacular strikes on military sites in occupied Crimea have hit Russian morale while projecting a sense to the people of Ukraine and their allies that it is Kyiv, not its more powerful neighbour, that is managing to maintain the initiative.