Moscow: Russia's top counterintelligence agency on Monday blamed Ukrainian spy services for organising the killing of the daughter of a leading Russian nationalist ideologue in a car bombing just outside Moscow.
Daria Dugina, the 29-year-old daughter of Alexander Dugin, a philosopher, writer and political theorist whom some in the West described as Putin's brain, died when an explosive planted in her SUV exploded as she was driving Saturday night.
Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), the main KGB successor agency, said that Dugina's killing had been prepared and perpetrated by the Ukrainian special services.
In a letter expressing condolences to Dugin and his wife that was released by the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the cruel and treacherous killing of Dugina, hailing her as a bright, talented person with a real Russian heart kind, loving, responsive and open.
Putin added that Dugina has honestly served people and the Fatherland, proving what it means to be a patriot of Russia with her deeds.
On Sunday, Ukraine's presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak denied any Ukrainian involvement in the killing.
In Monday's statement, the FSB accused a Ukrainian citizen, Natalya Vovk, of perpetrating the killing and then fleeing from Russia to Estonia.
The FSB said that Vovk arrived in Russia in July with her 12-year-old daughter and rented an apartment in the building where Dugina lived to shadow her. It said that Vovk and her daughter were at a nationalist festival, which Alexander Dugin and his daughter attended just before the killing.