Natalya Vovk

 

Natalya Vovk
Born	1979 (age 44–45)
Nationality	Ukrainian
Other names	Natalya Shaban
Occupation	banker
Known for	accused of planting a fatal bomb

The FSB claims this ID card established Natalya Vovk had ties to Neo-nazis, Ukrainian officials claim the card is a forgery.

Natalya Vovk is a Ukrainian woman Russian FSB security officials named as the assassin of Daria Dugina, a prominent Russian proponent of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. They claim she had moved into the same apartment building as Dugina. Russian officials claimed Vovk had her 12-year-old daughter with her, when she planted the fatal bomb.

Russian security officials have released surviellance footage they say shows Vovk driving her car across the border with Estonia.

According to the Odessa Journal Russian officials claimed she and her daughter entered Russia, driving a Mini Cooper, on July 23, 2022. They claim she put three different license plates on the vehicle, to help evade detection. They said she entered Russia with the vehicle bearing plates from the Donetz Peoples Republic, the puppet regime in Russian occupied east Ukraine. While driving around in Russia she used a license plate from Kazakhstan. They said she exited with Ukrainian plates on her car.

Radio Free Europe reported that the FSB claims triggered skepticism and cynicism. They compared the 36 hours it took to allege Vovk was Dugina's killer, with the failure to open an investigation into the poisoning of Aleksei Navalny, two years ago. They noted "The FSB’s version raises some potentially embarrassing questions. How could a Ukrainian agent successfully get into and out of Russia when border guards are supposedly closely screening every Ukrainian, including searching their phones?"

Radio Free Europe said that anomalies suggested the Dugins were not targetted by Ukrainians, or other outsiders, but rather that the assassination was an instance of infighting of different factions within the Russian leadership. They asserted that the Dugins were not important targets for outsiders. They asserted the Dugins' influence had been waning.

The FSB claimed they have found documents that confirm she was a member of the Azov battalion, that had held out for weeks, in the Azovstal steel plant, during the occupation of Mariupol. In particular they produced an ID card, that appeared to show Vovk in a uniform. The body of that ID card appears to say she was a member of the battalion. But Ukrainian sources have said the ID card appears to be a forgery.