Pallade Veneta - Hundreds mourn Russian nationalist's daughter killed in car bomb

Alexander Dugin -- a vocal supporter of the Kremlin's military campaign who has claimed to be close to President Vladimir Putin -- may have been the intended target of the attack that killed his 29-year-old daughter.

Ukraine denies any involvement.

Mourners -- many carrying flowers -- paid their respects to Dugina at a hall in Moscow's Ostankino TV centre where her black-and-white portrait was displayed over an open casket.

Dugin and his wife, both dressed in black, sat next to their daughter's coffin.

"She died for the people, for Russia, at the front. The front -- it is here," Dugin said at the start of the ceremony.

Dugina was killed Saturday when a bomb placed in her car went off as she drove on a highway outside Moscow.

Russia says Ukrainian intelligence was behind the attack -- a claim dismissed by Kyiv.

Dugin, 60, gained prominence in the 1990s in the intellectual chaos that followed the break-up of the Soviet Union. He had been an anti-communist dissident in the last years of Soviet rule.

A regular feature on Russian television, the heavily bearded intellectual with the air of a prophet claimed he had an ideological influence on Putin.

Putin has become increasingly hostile towards the West and some see Dugin's hand in this, calling him "Putin's Rasputin" or "Putin's brain".

Dugina followed in her father's footsteps, becoming a well-known media personality who worked for pro-Kremlin television channels including Russia Today and Tsargrad.

O.Pileggi--PV