'Putin's Rasputin' had criticised Vladimir shortly before his daughter was blown up - but Russia denies 'false flag' attack and names female Ukrainian spy they claim detonated car bomb

Well, that’s quite a magical achievement.

If she’s in Ukraine, why was Russia saying she was up on the Baltic coast this morning?

Maybe she’s driven in a publicly advertised car that the Russians already knew about, to Estonia, thru Belarus and into Ukraine, in under 48 hours.

And it’s funny, this alleged killer has been swanning around with her daughter in tow all this time without rousing any suspicion, while a Russian resistance group has spent the past 24 hours trying to claim the credit.

Russia really should disconnect kool-aid and vodka from the hot and cold taps, and switch to potable water.

I started this evening looking for confirmation of the first report I saw that said it was her car blown up, but later reports are saying it was his car. Meanwhile a Russian antiwar group says they did it. Here is some material on that claim:

https://fortune.com/2022/08/22/daria-dugina-killed-car-bomb-fears-vladimir-putin-will-escalate-ukraine-violence-national-republican-army-claims-responsibility/

“Ilya Ponomarev, a former Russian member of parliament who dissented against Putin’s regime, claims the “National Republican Army” of Russian partisans carried out the attack. Ponomarev, who fled Russia in 2014 and gained Ukrainian citizenship in 2019, said he had been contacted by the little-known Russian antiwar partisans, who claimed they had committed “many other partisan acts” behind enemy lines.
He did not provide any evidence for these claims.

“This action, like many other partisan actions carried out on the territory of Russia in recent months, was carried out by the National Republican Army (NRA),” Ponomarev said, speaking on a Russian-language TV channel he launched in Kyiv earlier this year. He added, “a momentous event took place near Moscow last night. This attack opens a new page in Russian resistance to Putinism. New—but not the last.”

Ponomarev, who was the only Russian MP to vote against the annexation of Crimea in 2014, read out the manifesto for the group, which accused Putin of being a “usurper of power and a war criminal who amended the constitution, unleashed a fratricidal war between the Slavic peoples and sent Russian soldiers to certain and senseless death.” The group threatens similar attacks on prominent Russian businessmen and politicians, saying “those who do not resign their power will be destroyed by us.” “

[I have heard occasional reports of explosions in several locations in Russia over the past few months. Could these guys be doing stuff like that and not getting caught?]

Yes, there are so many POSSIBLE explanations about who’s responsible for the car bombing.

But the contortions and cognitive dissonances of the official Russian narrative - isn’t it always thus - simply tell us that they jumped on the most politically convenient, most easily embellished theory first. And as per usual, evolving “facts” start to erode the narrative.

A Ukrainian mum and daughter. Recent arrivals. They lived in the same building. So did, er, all the other residents. So what if she’s the most obvious suspect? A thorough investigation would look at the others.

Motive? On the face of it, “well they’re Ukes.” As are tens of thousands of other Russian Ukrainians who fled into Russia and have seen their home towns flattened, dozens of friends and family displaced or worse. Why is she the only suspect? That dissident group claiming responsibility has pointed at a whole bunch of sabotaging and it’s clear they have repeatedly been able to circumvent security... So why have they been ruled out?

If the motive was born out of an unexpected coincidence, moving in down the hall from Dugina - that might fly, but don’t tell me a random Uke with possible, and easily discovered, Azov connections would’ve passed a background check to live next door to a prominent pro-war mouthpiece. Cock-up theory easily beats conspiracy theory.

Means? Perhaps she was in the Border Guard. That’s circumstantial evidence at best. I personally know several multilingual Russian Ukrainian translators who did postgraduates in languages while in the Border Guards. None of them are Azov pro-Ukrainian partisans. One relocated to Zaporozhia to get away from Azov but is in the Ukrainian city aiding its defense. One’s here in the UK, working as a translator for our council. A few are in our Russian firm branches, and live comfortably in Russia as they’ve done for several years.

Russia is relying on “guilt by association” becayse NGU and Border Guards may have been 10% Azov Nazis... but that means 90% weren’t Azov Nazis so this “factoid” on its own doesn’t “prove” anything.

Opportunity? The Dugin family are very well connected and it’s unlikely that they have no protection at all. Security services, whether personal or at the venue, could’ve spotted someone rigging a device on a car. The Russian militant group already has those connections. How does a recently arrived Uke mom get that? Unless Russia is prepared to argue that Moscow is riddled with underground Ukrainian terrorist cells that could orchestrate all the necessary ducks in a row, it is far more likely that Russian actors nobbled the security AND/OR Russian security is just not as omnipresent or omniscience as it used to be.

Ah, it seems that the ID cleverly intercepted by the Russkies might be... Photoshopped.

1/5 SECOND LOOK: “Azov batallion ID” presented by FSB, as basic online forensic tools see it. Forensically reveals the quality time the photoshop artist spent with clone tool, due to some darn fine pattern. #dugina #UkraineWar #FSB #fake https://t.co/Zwf8B1P3cq

The forensic analysis appears to suggest that the “evidence” is amateurish level fakery with the preposterous idea that an undercover Azov operative carried Azov ID, forgot to take it with her, and then conspicuously made sure she was seen over a ten hour drive to Estonia.

Ag, well. Nice try Ivan.

Arf...

Turns out the id was lifted from an archive in Mariupol and then digitally edited.

Sane digital editing method was applied again...

⚡️Breaking News⚡️
The FSB announced that they found another Passport of a Ukrainian National Guard soldier in a conspiratorial apartment.This person was also involved in the assassination of #Dugina .Her name:Margarita Simonyan.She is suspected of having planned the assassination https://t.co/NTQvQ7NTnS

John Sweeney was interviewed on TV this morning. (Who? Long-standing British investigative reporter, currently in Kyiv but has been in North Korea and other places in the past). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Sweeney_(journalist) He's posed cordial, if forthright, questions to Putin in the past: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISNvOzzrfsU His view on the Dugina bombing: after being in multiple conflict zones and seeing the bodies of people who've been caught in a burning car AND people who've been thrown out of an exploding vehicle, he isn't convinced that the body in the coffin doesn't look like the body of a car bomb victim. https://preview.redd.it/kpxzugkalhj91.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=0975ee54234df127bead44858e6469daefd0ad57 He's not the first to raise an eyebrow - it is highly improbable that even the most skilled mortuary attendant could patch a face back together that well and that quickly after a bomb UNDER THE DRIVER'S SEAT propelled the victim either thru the glass window or through the sunroof. There's also the footage of Dugin at the scene - he looks at the fire engine with his face on his head like Culkin with the aftershave in Home Alone, looks at the burning car, and doesn't - NOT EVEN ONCE - look at the body on the ground. In fact, he walks past it without even looking at it and then stands for half a minute, maybe 5 yards away, with his back to it. If that were your daughter wouldn't you be on your knees trying to resuscitate her, or cradling her body? Also - I call bullshit on him having a heart attack and then showing up with that ludicrous speech at her funeral. Her first words were . What kind of sociopath do you need to be to attend your daughter's funeral and turn it into a hagiography of Russian fascism? There's so much that's just shoddy about the Russian narrative around this whole affair. The doctored ID being traced to an archive set from Mariupol. The sheer convenience of all the information falling into the security services' hands within hours as easily as if the perp had left it all in a box for them to pick up. The highly conspicuous traceability of the suspect's movements. The complete disinterest in exploring any other possible suspect, connections, or factors including security cameras being turned off - even after other groups claimed responsibility. The lack (so far) of any targeted reprisal combined with the predictable ranting on national television about reprisals - as if displacing 12 million people and flattening hundreds of settlements wasn't punishment enough. The one nugget of truth on Russian TV in all this is the ranting about the failures inside Russia, whether it's to motivate the ultra-patriotism needed to feed the meat grinder or build the defensive capabilities they believe they'll need if they escalate to a point if NATO decides to roll its sleeves up and get its boots wet instead of just supporting the Ukrainian resistance.

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