Front Burner - A car bomb’s impact on a Russia at war

Episode Date: August 26, 2022

On Saturday, a car bomb killed pro-war Russian commentator Darya Dugina on the outskirts of Moscow. Dugina was the daughter of ultranationalist philosopher Alexander Dugin, whose influence on Russian President Vladimir Putin is widely debated — leading to speculation the bomb was meant for Dugin himself. Today on Front Burner, The Guardian's Moscow correspondent Andrew Roth explains who Dugin is, the competing theories for who was responsible for the car bombing, and what impact the attack could have on how the war in Ukraine is fought.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. This week marks six months since Russia invaded Ukraine. And the bloodshed continues. On Wednesday, Russian rockets hit a train station in eastern Ukraine,

killing at least 22 people and wounding dozens more. By Thursday, President Vladimir Putin had signed a decree to increase the size of Russia's military in the next several months. And earlier this week, violence struck near the city of Moscow itself. Well, the daughter of a major ally of Vladimir Putin has been killed in a car bombing near Moscow. Russian journalist Daria Dugina was killed on Saturday. She was a major booster of the war. And the attack at home has ignited all sorts of whodunit theories and nationalist anger.

Many, including Dugina's allies, think her death was really designed to target her father, Alexander Dugin, who, depending on who you ask, is either Putin's brain or a fringe player with little influence. Now, according to local and state media, she had been attending a festival with her father. We're told that they were due to travel back together from this event in the same car. But for some reason, Alexander Dugin made a last-minute decision to travel separately from his daughter. Russian intelligence blamed the attack on Ukrainian agents, which Ukraine denies. And Western analysts are saying Russia's story doesn't really make a lot of sense.

There's also speculation it could have been an inside job, or something else entirely. So today, I'm joined by The Guardian Moscow correspondent Andrew Roth. He's going to explain who Dugin and Dugina are, how her death is resonating in Russia, and why there's fears this could impact the way the war is fought. Hi, Andrew. Thank you so much for making the time to come back on the show. Hi, thank you so much for having me again. It's such a pleasure. So I wonder if we could start with Alexander Dugin. Who exactly is he? Tell me about him. Alexander Dugin is a political philosopher who was known in Russia for being pretty much on the far right,

kind of religious, ultra conservative, and someone would say, almost neo fascist kind of political philosopher in Russia. So this is a guy who for the last 20 or 30 years, has been talking a lot about what Russian-ness means, why Russia is exceptional, and why Russia is in a kind of existential conflict with the West. While many ex-Soviet republics have sought closer relations with Europe, Russia envisions a different future.

To Dugin, this is the concept of Eurasia as a counterweight to American domination. I believe in the future greatness of Russia because Russia was always and tried to be a superpower. It's our dream not to rule the world, but to be recognized as one center of decisions with others. What are some of the particularly inflammatory things that he said about Ukraine and Ukrainians in general?

the breakup of the Russian Empire is somehow unnatural. So to him, the idea of Ukraine as a separate state, Ukrainians as a separate people, does not exist. So one factor that we know about him for certain is that he's been one of the very big boosters of the war in Ukraine that's happening right now, and also the earlier conflict that began with the annexation of Crimea and with the war in East Ukraine that began in 2014. So some of the most inflammatory things that he said came shortly after the conflict began back in 2014 when he was talking about this war that was taking place. And he said that Russians should be ready to kill, kill, kill Ukrainians. He's talking about how Ukraine doesn't exist as a state. You know, and these are things that for a lot of people set up the idea that this is not just a normal conflict, this is a genocide.

And this is really about people fighting to exist in their core. And Dugin is a person who, in his view of geopolitics, certainly doesn't see a place for an independent Ukraine. You are known as Putin's Rasputin, and I've even seen Putin's brain. So he has listened to you in the past. The base of this affirmation is precisely the correspondence between what Putin does and what I always say. between what Putin does and what I always say. Some North American media outlets have called Dugan Putin's brain or have described him as something of like a Kremlin mastermind. And certainly some of what you were just talking about,

it does sound very similar to some of what Putin has said about Ukraine and Ukrainians as well, and this war. And so how influential is Dugin on politics and specifically on Vladimir Putin? Yeah, it's an interesting question. And I think it's worth it to be very skeptical about those those monikers, right? Putin's brain or Putin's Rasputin, as some people have also dubbed him. We don't have any evidence that they've ever met before, Putin and Dugin. There are no photographs of them together if you look in the kind of Russian archives. And to be honest, while we know that some people in, you could say, Putin's circle might have read Dugin, Putin certainly has never mentioned him before. And it presents this

interesting question, which came first, the chicken or the egg? You propose that Russia annex Ukraine. You said that Russia should encourage Britain to leave the EU, Brexit. You suggested that Russia make Iran an ally. Now, it does sound as if Mr. Putin is following your blueprint. I agree there is a similarity. More than that, that is only first steps. In some ways, Dugin foresaw,

I think, the changes that were going to happen in Russian politics. You know, this hard turn to the right. I agree there is a similarity. More than that, that is only first steps. This kind of war with the West and why Ukraine is so important to Russia, this idea of what, you know, kind of what it belongs to Moscow to a certain degree. But he's also seen here as a bit

of a huckster, kind of swindler, a person who was always very keen to present himself as influential, maybe without the bona fides to back that up. You know, I've been here for about 10 years, and I can remember Dugan asking for 500 euro for an interview. You know, he was so popular after the war began in Crimea, or the war began in East Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea. He was very much a self-promoter. And I think another way that's worth thinking about him

is a little bit like a member of Trump world. If you think of Sebastian Gorka or some of these other figures who might seem to have the same policies, but actually are just kind of grabbing onto the trend as it's kind of on the ascendancy. And it's something that he's been very successful at. very successful at. So I think that one thing about him is that we should be careful about mistaking his own PR and propaganda for his actual influence. And the fact is that while he might have foreseen this, we don't really have evidence that Vladimir Putin was thinking about Dugin when he started this war. Before we talk about the assassination, I want to talk about his daughter, Daria Dugina. Of course, she was killed on Saturday in this car bombing, and she was a personality in her own right, right? And can you tell me a little bit about her and how her ideology compares to her father's? Sure. To a very large degree, Daria Lugina is a chip off the old block. So she is a person who was regularly going on television.

She was a media personality and sort of an amateur philosopher. And her message was very much the same as her father's. You know, she was very much pro-war in terms of why Russia was involved in the war in Ukraine, in terms of why Russia was involved in the war in Ukraine, in terms of her questions or her rejection of, let's say, a separate Ukrainian statehood. She last appeared on state TV boasting that Russia was being delicate when it came to what it calls its special operation. She said Russia should hold tribunals across eastern Ukraine to, quote, investigate these people who are already not human.

And in many ways, she just adopted her father's politics. I mean, she said pretty openly that she's trying to continue them. I think the one difference is that she kind of did that without a lot of the baggage that he had. And he was seen kind of as this kook to a certain degree, a kind of swindler, like I mentioned. And she didn't have all of this baggage with her. to a certain degree, a kind of swindler, like I mentioned. And she didn't have all of this baggage with her. She didn't have the kind of idiosyncrasies that he did because she just hadn't been involved in politics for the last 30 years.

So she was less known than he was, but she might have been a more effective communicator to a certain degree. She distanced herself from him effectively while still starting to get on TV. So her politics were quite similar. And you might compare it to kind of Jean-Marie Le Pen. I was just thinking that. Yeah, somebody who basically has the same politics, right? And even the far right politics,

but doesn't carry the same historical baggage with them. So what do we know at this point about the circumstances of her death? Basically, what happened on Saturday. So there's a lot of controversy and a lot of discussion about what happened, who did it. But what we do know is that both of them attended the far-right cultural festival that takes place in the Moscow region that's called Traditsiya, or Tradition. You know, Alexander Dugin gave a speech at this event.

She was also involved, his daughter Daria. And sometime after the event, Daria left. And about five minutes away from the venue on her way back to Moscow, a bomb ripped through the car, set the car on fire, and she was killed in the explosion. So shortly after that, somebody at the scene released a video of Dugan at the scene the shock of a father his hands clutching his head in horror staring at the burning vehicle his daughter was driving and so it became clear that he wasn't in the car when they were driving back immediately

there were questions raised about who the bomb was meant for who planted the bomb so far those investigations are kind of still ongoing. You know, this is all speculation. What we do know is that she was killed in the incident and that so far the Russian government has blamed the Ukrainian government for the explosion. What does the Russian government say happened? Like, who do they say is responsible?

Right, so there are several sort of different theories about, you know, how the bomb was planted, who planted the bomb. So we'll start with the kind of Russian version of events at the moment. After about maybe one day after the explosion took place, the Russian FSB agency, this is the kind of major security and intelligence agency in Russia, Security and Intelligence Agency in Russia, released, let's say, a claim or a statement that a Ukrainian woman and her daughter had traveled into Russia, had shattered Darya Dugina, surveilled her in the days before the explosion took place, and then after the explosion had taken place, had fled the country. And so their argument is basically that this woman was part of some plan set up by the Ukrainian Intelligence Agency to assassinate Dugina.

They've released very little evidence to support that theory or that claim so far. They've only released kind of video of this woman entering Russia and leaving Russia and entering an apartment block that supposedly also belonged to Dugina. Dugin, but they've pretty much set it up to say that, you know, on the official basis, the Russian government is blaming the Ukrainian government for the death of this far-right pundit. What does the Ukrainian government said about it? I guess, you know, one question I have is, why would she be such a good target? Yeah, I think that's one of the first questions that skeptics of this theory have. I mean, the motive doesn't really make much sense. Dugin in the past had said incredibly inflammatory things and called for the deaths of Ukrainians. And, you know, some people could see this as kind of retribution against him. quite a few people.

And that's the version that the Russian government is kind of putting forth. So the Ukrainian government has so far said, you know, we don't have anything to do with this whatsoever. A spokesman for the presidential administration in Ukraine said,

Ukraine surely doesn't have anything to do with yesterday's explosion because we're not a criminal state. We're not a terrorist state. So, you know, the Ukrainian argument and response so far has just been to reject the accusations from the Russian side. I would note that anytime there's been a cross-border attack, you know, in Russia in particular, so, you know, in Belgrade or these

other cities that are on the other side of the border from Ukraine, the Ukrainian government has a policy of denying them or not commenting on them. You know, the Ukrainian government says that we're only fighting inside of Ukraine and the other stuff we really are not going to comment on. So, you know, in this case, it doesn't really give us too much insight into what really happened. But we do have to say that, I mean, there really is no proof so far for the version being put forward by the Russian government. What are some of the other theories here about what happened? So there are several other theories, and I mean, this is also, you know,

veering into conspiracy theory to a certain degree. One is that the bomb is itself planted by the Russian government to create a rationale or a reason to escalate the war. You know, this is a bombing and a murder that has angered a lot of people on the Russian right in particular, kind of conservatives who want to see the war uh you know this is a bombing and a murder that has angered a lot of people on the russian

right in particular kind of conservatives who want to see the war with ukraine escalated they want to see russia declare total mobilization and we could say push even harder to make this a total war against ukraine shortly after death dugana was could say, honored with something close to a state funeral. I mean, there were a lot of high-level politicians who attended the funeral. It was covered on a lot of major television stations. This is the memorial service for Daria Dugina. The event was held inside a Moscow TV station and broadcast live.

The price that we're having to pay can only be justified by one thing, the highest achievement, which is victory. She lived in the name of victory and she died in the name of victory, our Russian victory, our truth, our orthodoxy, our country and our empire. And we have to note that for much of her life and her father's life they've been kind of kept at arm's length from the kremlin um they're almost a little bit too extreme and a little bit too far to the right that they were almost used as a kind of he in particular was used as a kind of you know an example of a kind of out of control nationalist that they could echo when they needed to but also distance themselves from when they wanted to. So to see them kind of embraced by media and by political officials like this made it seem

like this is all leading somewhere and it might be leading towards an escalation of the conflict. You know, it's tough to see a direct connection between that and any changes in the war so far. But one idea is that this is what, you know, people might call a false flag and that this was a setup, basically, to give Russia a reason to escalate the war with Ukraine. So that's another theory, and we don't really have any evidence supporting that at all so

far. I mean, this is also something that, to a certain degree, falls into, I'd say, the box of conspiracy theory, because we can't really back it up at all. And then there are other theories as well that maybe she was involved in a business dispute or this was you know an explosion or a murder that didn't have anything to do specifically with the war in ukraine so that's also always possible it happens less now but russia does have you know a history of gangland murders and these kinds of attacks but investigators claim this was a contract killing. They claim that it

was planned in advance. So it doesn't look like an accident. And I think that's the key in terms of going forward. And is it also possible that her father was the intended target here? Yeah, I think when this happened, you know, my first theory was that her father was the intended target. And I think most people who are watching this thought the same. Early reports said that he was supposed to be in the car or that it even was his car that was being driven. Those don't seem to have panned out. It looks like it really was her car. And the Russians are claiming that she was the intended target.

Right, that she had been surveilled by this woman. Yeah, exactly. So it's possible that he was the main target. I think most people thought that. But it seems like the official theories from both sides are kind of moving away from that at the moment. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization,

empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income?

That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. So I guess regardless of the motive, right, whether it was a false flag operation, essentially whether it was an inside job,

whether it was Ukraine who killed Darya Dugina, or whether it was an inside job, whether it was Ukraine who killed Darya Dugina, or whether it was a contract, some other kind of contract killing for some other reason. Do you think that this event will influence how Russia approaches the war from this point on? Yeah, I think that's kind of the million dollar question. It's the most important question going forward. You know, Russia always kind of has this option. They can either decide to escalate or they can ignore events, right? Because politics don't really play that much of a role here. Putin really can just ignore public sentiment or opinion because it doesn't really force

his hand. But what we have seen so far is that they really prominently covered her murder and covered her funeral on state television. Russian state television's tribute to Daria Dugina. A signal to us all, the presenter says. She died for her views. She died for the idea of the Russian world. So I do think that it has kind of entered the public consciousness

that this was an important event. And it is very possible that this is going to lead to some kind of an escalation in terms of the way that Russia wages the war, even if we don't kind of see it yet. For the Russian far right, or you could say for the Russian conservative war hawks, this has become a kind of cause de la brie. It's become very important. We see them calling for attacks on major Ukrainian government buildings like the SBU Intelligence Agency. They're calling for direct strikes against basically government centers in Kiev. That would be something that would also be an escalation. The other last element is just that what's happening as the war goes on is that it's becoming harder and harder for Russians to ignore the violence,

I think, that their government has kind of unleashed on Ukraine. You know, being here, being in Moscow right now, it's so important that Russians feel like they can continue living a normal life. You know, whether it be finding the brands that they want at stores, whether it be cafes and pubs and bars being open, it's a bit like having your cake and eating it too. You know, the war doesn't come back to affect you whatsoever. But in the last month or so, especially since we've seen more of a stalemate or slowdown

in the kind of actual war, we see more and more of these incidents taking place either in Russia or in territory that Russia has occupied. So a good example are the explosions in Crimea that have been taking place for the last month or so. This is right at the height of tourism season, which is not something we expected to be taking place during a major war. But it feels like the reality of the war only dawned on Russian tourists there when it started to come home, when you started to see major ammunition dumps blow up.

This is, I think, an important moment for maybe Russians in Moscow as well. I mean, you know, the car bombing of a well-known pundit could just be the first step of what might start to become more of a campaign of guerrilla violence. If it was involved, Ukraine involved. And if it wasn't, it's still going to raise the specter for people worried about these kinds of acts going forward. So I think that that's kind of what's important about this incident going forward. Okay. Andrew, thank you so much for this. This was really, really interesting. And thank you so much for coming back on. I know you're very busy. Thank you so much for having me again. Bryce Hoy, and Rooksir Ali. Our sound design was by Matt Cameron and Sam McNulty. Our music is by Joseph Chabison. The show was executive produced this week by Imogen Burchard and Ali Janes.

I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening, and we, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.