Darya Dugina: Daughter of Putin ally killed in Moscow car blast

Samuel Ramani, from the Royal United Services Institute, said Dugin’s reported effect on Kremlin policy is “grossly overstated”. “I reject the claims that he was ‘Putin’s Rasputin’ or ‘Putin’s brain’ – the titles given to him by the Western media,” Ramani told Al Jazeera. “In fact, he never really held an official title in Russia … I don’t think it’s a strike at a major foreign policy decision-maker. Both sides are denying it, but I don’t think this was done to derail or disrupt Russian policy.”