Are Ukraine’s supporters taking unprecedented steps to fight Russia on its own soil?

The Kremlin certainly has reasons to be suspicious after this weekend – though Ukraine denies state involvement in the latest attack.

Investigators in Moscow are now looking for the person or group that organised to plant a bomb which killed the daughter of a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia said an explosive device was on the bottom of a car driven by Daria Dugina.

As police looked for the people behind the murder, The Guardian quoted a former Russian MP – who is now based in Ukraine – claiming it was the work of the National Republican Army.

Speaking in Kyiv, Ilya Ponomarev said the attack was organised by the group which is dedicated to overthrowing the Putin regime.

“This attack opens a new page in Russian resistance to Putinism. New – but not the last,” Mr Ponomarev said in a video posted to YouTube.

Attack was meant for Dugin

The 29-year-old victim was the daughter of Alexander Dugin, a prominent proponent of the “Russian world” concept ideology and a man referred to as “Putin’s brain”.

The pair has been vocal supporters of Russia’s war on Ukraine and Mr Dugin is said to have been the “spiritual guide” of the invasion.

Ms Dugina, who had expressed similar views to her father and had appeared as a commentator on the Russian nationalist TV channel Tsargrad, had recently been the target of British sanctions for peddling “disinformation”.

CNN reported that the US Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned Ms Dugina for an article she wrote about how Ukraine would “perish” if it was admitted to NATO.

She has also claimed in a recent TV interview that slaughter of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha was actually American propaganda.

Using the familiar form of her name, Tsargrad said on Sunday: “Dasha, like her father, has always been at the forefront of confrontation with the West.”

Mr Dugin, 60, was giving a philosophy lecture on Saturday night and was reportedly due to drive home in his Toyota Land Cruiser alongside his daughter.

At the last minute, he decided to travel home in a different car.

Ms Dugina drove alone and was near the village of Bolshiye Vyazemy when the bomb exploded about 9pm Saturday (local time).

Who is behind the attack?

No suspects were immediately identified and, despite the comments by the former MP, no group has claimed responsibility.

Denis Pushilin, president of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic that is a focus of Russia’s fighting in Ukraine, blamed it on “terrorists of the Ukrainian regime, trying to kill Alexander Dugin”.

“Taking into account the data already obtained, the investigation believes that the crime was pre-planned and was of an ordered nature,”  Russian investigators said on Monday morning.

Ukrainian officials publicly denied involvement, during media interviews on Sunday night.

-with wires