The daughter of a Putin propagandist was killed in a car bomb authorised by the Ukrainian government, the United States intelligence agencies have said.
Intelligence agencies believe parts of the Ukrainian government authorised the car bomb attack near Moscow in August that killed Daria Dugina.
Ms Dugin was a prominent supporter of the Kremlin's war in Ukraine and the daughter of Alexsandr Dugin, a far-right proponent of Russian imperialism sometimes referred to as "Putin's brain."
The US has condemned Ukrainian officials as they are concerned such attacks, while high in symbolic value, could provoke the Kremlin to expand the conflict further.
She was killed in a car bomb attack near Moscow in August and officials in Washington had not been made aware of the operation ahead of time.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukraine ’s president, insisted that Ukrainian officials were not involved.
“I’ll underline that any murder during wartime in some country or another must carry with it some kind of practical significance,” he told The New York Times.
Ms Dugina was driving her father's car and American and Russian officials think he may have been the original target of the attack.
Mr Dugin was supposed to drive into Moscow with his daughter but decided at the last minute to travel back in another car.
“An explosive device allegedly installed in a Toyota Land Cruiser car went off at full speed on a public highway, and then the car caught fire ", the state investigative committee said in a report.
It continued: “The female driver died on the spot. The identity of the deceased has been established: it is the journalist and political scientist Darya Dugina.”
US officials declined to disclose who in the Ukrainian government was believed to have authorised the mission, who carried out the attack, or whether President Volodymyr Zelensky had signed off on the mission.
But one anonymous senior Ukrainian military official revealed that Ukrainian forces, with the help of local fighters, had carried out assassinations and attacks on accused Ukrainian collaborators and Russian officials in occupied Ukrainian territories.
They said that included the Kremlin-installed head of the Kherson region who was poisoned in August.
CNN ratified the New York Times' claims and published a report on US officials' belief that "elements" in Ukraine's government approved the attack.
“We have nothing to do with the murder of this lady – this is the work of the Russian special services,” Oleksii Danylov, secretary of Ukraine’s National Security Council, said in August.
Both Dugin and Dugina were sanctioned by the United States after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to invade Ukraine in February.
The US accused them of spreading propaganda and acting to destabilise Ukraine.
Russia is yet to avenge Ukraine in a specific way to Dugina's assassination, but Washington is thought to be concerned that the wheels are in motion for a retaliation.
