“One nation, one president, one victory” Politicians and propagandists turn Dugina's memorial service into a pro-war rally

Leonid Slutsky, the head of the LDPR party and the Chairman of the Committee on International Affairs in the State Duma, paraphrased an infamous Nazi motto in his address:

“Regardless of our affiliations with political parties, there can be only one approach. One nation. One president. One victory.” “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer!” [One People, One Realm, One Leader!] was the motto used on posters with a portrait of Hitler designed to consolidate the German nation. The motto was also used in Austria during the Anschluss referendum.

In conversation with the press, Slutsky subsequently tried to justify his statement: “We must be united like never before. One nation and its future. One president. And one victory, following which, Daria, our fair, beautiful, incredibly intelligent Daria will be commemorated by a street or square name... In a denazified Kyiv.”

Despite Slutsky’s explanations, the fragment with this phrase was later removed from the recording of his address on LDPR’s official Telegram channel. The party claims it was taken down “for purely technical reasons”. “No one cut it out. The fragment did not make it into the final version for purely technical reasons. When Leonid Slutsky uttered these words, people with flowers were passing in front of the camera blocking the view. Otherwise, we would have kept it. This utterance of his has no historical reference and concerns the current patriotic situation in the country. There is no hidden meaning. I would say this phrase is closer to “For Faith, for the Tsar, and the Homeland!” <The Insider's note: a popular motto in Imperial Russia>, if we were to draw any historical parallels. A purely Russian motto,” head of LDPR’s press service Alexander Dyupin stated to Pod’yom.

The father of the deceased, Eurasianist philosopher Alexander Dugin, declared that his daughter had died “for Russia’s victory”:

“I wanted to raise my daughter as a perfect human being. First of all, this implies faith. She spent all her childhood in Russian Orthodox summer camps and was a regular at the church. It’s important. But I also wanted her to be an intelligent believer. This is why her mother and I encouraged her to become a philosopher. And so she did. I can't say if she was profound as a philosopher but she did her best to progress. We may see some new revelations in her work, something we never noticed before.

Some of the first words we taught her as a child were of course Russia, our power, our people, our empire. She became perfect by going through ordeals; she became a much better person than we ever were.

If her tragic death, her individuality, her integrity touched anyone, she would only have one wish: 'Do not remember me! Do not sing glory to my name! Fight for our great country! Defend our faith, our sacred Russian Orthodox faith, and love the Russian people!' Because she died for our people. “She died for Russia, on the front line. And the front line is here. Not there but right here. Inside each of us. The biggest price we have to pay can only be justified by our victory. She lived for victory, and she died for our Russian victory.”

“Orthodox oligarch” Konstantin Malofeyev, the founder of the Tsargrad television channel, insisted that Dugina “did not die in vain” because “the blood of our martyrs makes us stronger”:

“Thanks to the untimely demise of our dearly beloved Daria, we will certainly win this war. She wanted this. She lived for this. ... And in Heaven, she will be the Lord’s warrior too.”

Chairman of A Just Russia Sergey Mironov named Volodymyr Zelensky as the contractor of Dugina’s killing:

“I do not doubt that those responsible for this act of terror – both the assassins and their paymaster, who is currently in Kyiv, none other than Mr. Zelelnsky himself – will be brought to justice in an international tribunal. ... And the victory, which will most certainly be ours, is the best way to immortalize Daria.”

Former presidential candidate Sergey Baburin blamed the “demonic West” for what happened:

“Of course, the entity that was the most interested in this atrocious crime is the demonic West. It was the West that called the shot. But she must be avenged. Avenged with our word. Avenged with our deeds. Today, the Russian world is battling the world's evil, defending itself, defending Ukrainian anti-fascists, the republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, the ‘Southern Rus’, and the rest of the world.”

Propagandist Dmitry Kiselyov declared that Russia should respond to Dugina’s killing with a “no-holds-barred denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine”:

“How should Russia respond? On the one hand, with a no-holds-barred denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine A no-holds-barred approach. An internal unity... For us, this tragic, unthinkable incident is a call to close our ranks. To become stronger. And to cast away any doublethink, which was an inherent quality of our intelligentsia until recently and ended in great tragedies more than once.”

When her car exploded outside Moscow on the evening of August 20, 29-year-old Daria Dugina died on the spot. Alexander Dugin's acquaintances insist that the philosopher planned to ride with her but changed his mind at the very last moment and left in a different car.

The bomb is believed to have been planted in the car in the parking lot of the estate where Dugina attended a festival. Earlier, REN TV reported that CCTV cameras on the parking lot had been down for two weeks, according to their sources.

Two days later the bombing, on August 22, the FSB accused Ukrainian special services of her murder. According to the agency's version, her assassin was Ukrainian national Natalia Vovk, born in 1979. She was reported to have arrived in Russia on July 23, 2022, together with her 12-year-old daughter.

The FSB released a video of Vovk entering Russia with her daughter. The video also features footage of her entering the apartment block where Dugina lived and the moment of her crossing the Estonian border. Furthermore, the FSB published three CCTV images that allegedly captured her car with Ukrainian, Kazakh, and the so-called DPR’s license plates. The video was distributed by Russian state-owned media and pro-government Telegram channels.