Ukraine denies killing Putin ally Alexander Dugin’s daughter Daria in car bombing

The Ukrainian government has denied any involvement in the car bombing that killed the daughter of staunch Vladimir Putin ally Alexander Dugin, officials said Sunday.

Daria Dugina, 29, died after the SUV she was driving exploded on the outskirts of Moscow Saturday night, according to Russian authorities.

An adviser to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky was quick to reject responsibility after some Russian officials blamed the attack on Ukrainian “terrorists.”

“Ukraine, of course, has nothing to do with yesterday’s explosion,” advisor Mykhailo Podolyak said.

“We are not a criminal state, unlike Russia, and definitely not a terrorist state.”

The Russian Investigative Committee said preliminary information from its murder probe indicated a bomb had been planted in the vehicle Dugina was driving as she returned from a cultural festival she had attended with her father.

Speculation has been rife that her father — a nationalist philosopher and writer often referred to as “Putin’s brain” — was the intended target of the purported attack.

Witnesses said Dugin, who owned the SUV, had decided at the last minute to leave the festival in another vehicle, according to Russian media.

Footage taken at the scene of the explosion on the Mozhaisk Highway showed Dugin in apparent shock and holding his hands over his head as he looked over the burning wreck.

Denis Pushilin, president of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, the pro-Russian region that is a focus of the Ukraine war, immediately blamed the bombing on “terrorists of the Ukrainian regime, trying to kill Alexander Dugin.”

Abbas Gallyamov, a former speechwriter for Putin and political analyst, called the attack “an act of intimidation” aimed at Kremlin loyalists.

No one has officially claimed responsibility for the blast.

Dugin is an advocate of the “Russian World” ideology and has been a vehement supporter of Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.

His daughter, who was a TV commentator and prominent Putin supporter in her own right, had expressed similar views.

She had been sanctioned by the US back in March over her work as chief editor of the United World International website.

The US described the site as a disinformation source, pointing specifically to a United World article that said Ukraine would “perish” if the country was admitted to NATO.

With Post wires