TULA, Russia -- A court in Russia's western city of Tula has sentenced two men to 3 1/2 years in prison each for their alleged involvement in a car bombing in August that killed Darya Dugina, the daughter of Kremlin-linked far-right ideologue Aleksandr Dugin.
The Proletarsky district court sentenced Aleksandr Suchkov and Andrei Kuznetsov on May 3 after finding them guilty of forging documents on a car that was allegedly used by Ukrainian citizen Natalya Vovk, whom Russian investigators accuse of executing the car bombing, to leave Russia after the attack.
Suchkov and Kuznetsov confessed at the trial that they forged the documents, but insisted they had no idea for whom they did that.
Dugina, 29, was killed when the car she was driving blew up on a road in the Moscow region on August 20 2022. Russian investigators said at the time that an explosive device was likely planted on the car.
Family members said Dugin, one of the main proponents of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, decided at the last minute to switch cars with his daughter as they were leaving a festival outside Moscow.
Ukrainian officials have denied that Kyiv was behind the deadly bombing.
In April, a court in Moscow issued an arrest warrant for Ukrainian citizen Bohdan Tsyhanenko. Russia's Federal Security Service says days before the car bombing that killed Dugina, Tsyhanenko arrived to Russia via Estonia and provided Vovk with forged documents and the explosive device that was allegedly used in the attack.
According to the Russian investigators, Tsyhanenko left Russia the day before the attack.
A well-known Russian military blogger and supporter of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Vladlen Tatarsky (aka Maksim Fomin), was killed last month by a bomb blast in a St. Petersburg cafe.
Russian authorities again accused Ukraine of organizing the attack, but Kyiv also denied any involvement.