Russia's secret services, Federal Security Service (FSB) has released a video of Ukrainian spy Natalia Vovk, who is allegedly the prime suspect in Saturday's car bomb attack that killed journalist Darya Dugina. The video released on Monday shows Vovk and her teenage daughter entering the building where Darya lived and simultaneously fleeing after the assassination.
The video comes as FSB claimed that Vovk was planted by Ukrainian secret services to assassinate Darya, the daughter of Russian President Vladimir Putin's brain Alexander Dugin. According to reports, the bombing was intended to kill Dugin, a bearded man who resembles Rasputin and is regarded as a philosopher in Russia.
FSB's Bombshell Claims
On Monday, FSB named Vovk, 43, as the prime suspect in the killing of Darya and released a video clip explaining the timeline of her entering Russia and simultaneously fleeing to Estonia after the assassination. The footage, which was made public on Monday, shows Vovk and her teenage daughter entering the building where Darya lived while also leaving the country after her murder.
The sequence of events, as described by Russia's security service, reads like a plot from a Hollywood spy movie, with Vovk changing her appearance and using a different vehicle's license plate to hoodwink security guards.
The FSB claims that Vovk entered Russia on July 23 using Donetsk People's Republic license plates to avoid detection. According to the FSB report, Vovk and her daughter apparently convinced officials they were refugees from the Donetsk People's Republic, an occupied region of eastern Ukraine, before entering Russia while traveling in a Mini Cooper.
She was seen on video footage opening her car's bonnet in front of immigration officers, who then waived her through a checkpoint. These photos, supposedly taken on July 23, showed Vovk with blonde hair.
Her chestnut brown hair was visible on footage taken after that date, indicating that she may have dyed it or used a wig to hide her identity.
According to the FSB, Vovk rented an apartment in Darya's building and followed her covertly for several weeks throughout Moscow. Russian officials posted a video supposedly taken by a security camera inside an opulent Moscow apartment complex showing Vovk in an effort to substantiate this claim.
The secret service also made public what it claimed to be Vovk's Ukrainian military records, along with a portrait of her in the manner of a passport.
On the day of the assassination, Vovk and her daughter went to the Tradition festival, where Darya was taking part. They then killed her with a controlled explosion and fled to Estonia via the Russian city of Pskov.
Notably, the video presentation showed that the car's license plate numbers had been changed three times (numbers of the DPR, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine were used).
Like a Spy Thriller
Darya, a journalist and outspoken advocate for the invasion of Ukraine, drove away from the event in a Toyota Land Cruiser. An hour later, the car bomb detonated. The 800g device, according to Russian officials, had been mounted just beneath the driver's seat.
FSB confirmed that Vovk changed the license plates on her Mini Cooper to those from Kazakhstan before driving to Estonia on Sunday after the attack while using Ukrainian license plates.
Dugin was spotted at the explosion scene minutes later, holding his head in his hands. He had posted a typically venomous piece on social media just hours prior to the tragic blast, defending the war in Ukraine as Russia's defense against Nazism.
Russian authorities believe that Dugin was the intended target but his last-minute decision to hop into a different car saved him. Instead, it killed his daughter.
Additionally, according to Russian investigators, Vovk used her teenage daughter as a cover to move around Russia more openly. She was captured on the doorway camera renting an apartment in the same building as Darya.
A photo ID of Vovk in the Ukrainian National Guard uniform was published on the Russian internet in April as part of a dox of neo-Nazi Azov regiment members. Her daughter entered Russia using the surname Shaban, which is what the FSB claims she is known by.
However, sources close to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed these claims as "fiction." Aide Mykhailo Podolyak denied any Ukrainian involvement and proposed that rogue FSB agents may have been at fault.
Instead, he claimed that the assassination plot may have been hatched and executed by Putin himself or the FSB.
