ANKARA

Ukraine is not a “criminal state” like Russia, and so had nothing to do with the weekend killing of a relative of one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s allies, according to a top Ukrainian official.

Darya Dugina, the daughter of political scientist Alexander Dugin, was killed in a car explosion on the outskirts of Moscow late Saturday.

"I want to emphasize that Ukraine had nothing to do with this,” Mykhailo Podolyak, Ukraine's senior presidential adviser, told local channel ICTV on Sunday.

"They don’t understand that we’re not a criminal state like Russia," he added, adding that blaming Ukraine for the incident is probably meant to justify the drafting of more soldiers for Russia’s war against its western neighbor, now in its sixth month.

In recent years Moscow has been accused of being behind the assassinations of Russian critics and defectors abroad, including the near-deadly poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in 2018 in Salisbury, England.

On Saturday’s incident, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova pointed to what she called Ukraine’s "policy of state terrorism."

Reports claim that Darya Dugina’s father, called "Putin's brain," was the intended target.

Russia’s Investigation Committee said that the bombing “was planned in advance and committed on order” and that authorities are investigating.

Born in 1992, Dugina, like her father, was involved in journalism, philosophy, and political science.