Just days before the six-month mark of the invasion of Ukraine, a car bomb attack in a wealthy Moscow suburb that killed the daughter of one of Vladimir Putin's allies has puzzled observers.
Unverified footage posted on Telegram appears to show Alexander Dugin at the scene, his hands on his head staring in shock as he surveys the aftermath of the explosion that killed his daughter.
As Russian authorities accused Ukraine's secret services of carrying out the murder, the attack brought renewed uncertainty in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, particularly as some key dates loomed.
Wednesday will mark six months since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Ukraine was gearing up to remember its Independence Day on August 24, which prompted President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to warn on Saturday that "Russia may try to do something particularly nasty, something particularly cruel" this week.
The timing of the attack also comes amid stark assessments over Vladimir Putin's ruinous war in Ukraine, and calls for Russia to launch a new assault on Ukraine.
"The Russians are continuing to make attacks in the east … but they're very minor. They're not making much progress," Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in the US, told the ABC.
Already, a number of theories over who may be responsible for the bombing have circulated on social media.
The theories range from Ukrainians to underground Russian dissidents and maybe even the Russian President.
A few days after the attack, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) blamed Ukrainian spy agencies, naming a woman it said perpetrated the killing before fleeing from Russia to Estonia.
Adviser to Ukraine's President Zelenskyy, Mykhailo Podolyak, said the FSB's version of events was "Russian propaganda" from "a fictional world".
The mysterious attack on the man dubbed 'Putin's brain'
Alexander Dugin is an ultra-nationalist Russian ideologue who has long advocated the unification of Russian-speaking and other territories in a vast new empire.
He has been dubbed "Putin's brain" due to his influence on Russia's expansionist foreign policies, though many observers have cast doubts on whether he actually sits within the Kremlin's inner circle.
Some critics claim Dugin has played a significant part in his own myth making.
"His capacity to present himself as a profound thinker whose (often barking mad) ideas frame Kremlin thinking means he is considered important," Mark Galeotti wrote in the Spectator.
Mr Dugin's daughter, Darya Dugina, was a journalist who supported the invasion of Ukraine.
She was less famous than her father but was considered an important Russian propagandist and had expressed pride in being targeted by US and UK sanctions.
People familiar with the family have told Russian state media outlet Tass that "Alexander or probably they together were the target".
Given the potential symbolism of such an attack, attention has swiftly turned to who may be responsible.
Russia's Federal Security Service has claimed a Ukrainian woman infiltrated the country, and stalked Ms Dugina for a month before carrying out a "controlled explosion" to kill her.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria V Zakharova wrote on Telegram that if Ukraine was responsible, "then we have to be talking about a policy of state terrorism being realised by the Kyiv regime".
Yet Russian officials have not explained why Mr Dugin, whose ties to the Kremlin are the subject of debate, would be the focus of such an attack. The claims have also been dismissed by an adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
"Ukraine, of course, had nothing to do with this because we are not a criminal state, like the Russian Federation, and moreover we are not a terrorist state," Mykhailo Podolyak said.
Even so, some Russian nationalists, like RT editor Margarita Simonyan, have already been calling for retribution against Kyiv by demanding the Kremlin respond by targeting Ukrainian government buildings.
As rumours swirled online, another theory has centred on Russian partisans allegedly being behind the attack.
Ilya Ponomarev, who used to work for Russia's Duma before he was expelled for anti-Kremlin activities, said the attack may have been carried out by an underground group working inside Russia and dedicated to overthrowing the Putin regime.
These claims have not been verified by the ABC, though other analysts say they believe the attack's "origin is obviously internal, not external".
Car bombings and assassinations were a fixture in Russia in the turbulent 1990s.
In fact, FSB agents were believed to have assassinated a number of opponents using guns and car bombs during the Second Chechnyan War.
A few analysts suspect the attack on Dugina may have been a Kremlin hit, perhaps designed to make Putin's ally a martyr.
Anders Åslund, a former senior fellow in the Eurasia Centre with the Atlantic Council, is in that camp.
On Twitter, he wrote that it appears most likely that Putin killed Darya Dugina, pointing to the lack of video footage at her house and the fact Mr Dugin was supposed to be in the car. The ABC has not verified these claims.
There have also been reports of car bombings in Ukraine against targets aligned with Russia since the start of the Ukraine war, according to the Washington Post.
While the culprit remains unclear, Leonid Volkov, a close ally of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, believes the car bomb will likely be used by the Kremlin in some way.
"There is little doubt that this explosion will be used to legitimise a new wave of terror, including against the relatives of those who are unpopular with Putin," he wrote on Telegram.
The attack in the heart of Russia could also weaken the Kremlin's reputation, suggesting that Putin's grip on the country is not as firm as it appears, especially amid a ruinous military campaign in Ukraine.
Six months in, Putin's war has been marked by one failure after another
When Putin launched his invasion on February 24, he attempted to overrun Ukraine and depose its government, effectively putting a stop to its chances of joining NATO.
But analysts say Russian forces largely abandoned their original objectives within a month, amid fierce Ukrainian resistance and Russia's baffling military blunders.
The Kremlin declared a new goal of "liberating" the industrial heartland known as the Donbas and attempted to trap Ukrainian forces through a pincer movement in phase three, according to Mr Cancian.
Its troops advanced from Izyum in the north and Mariupol in the south, "but Mariupol held out much longer than they expected", so they were unable to pull it off, he added.
In what became the bloodiest phase of the war yet, Russian forces resorted to massive artillery strikes on Ukrainian positions that lasted several hours, eventually capturing Sievierodonetsk and its sister city, Lysychansk.
But the situation changed after the US provided Kyiv with special mobile multiple-rocket launchers, which allowed Ukraine's armed forces to destroy more than 50 Russian ammunition stores.
Since then, Moscow's campaign has "stalled" and both sides are now locked in a "stalemate," Mr Cancian said.
"The Russians have worn themselves out, they are not able to move forward," he said.
As its losses mounted, there were rumours that Russia had to pull some of its troops from Syria to recommit to Ukraine, while the Russian military was hard-pressed to bring reservists and new recruits into the fight.
Moscow is relying on a mostly volunteer force for its invasion, with military observers arguing that Putin is unlikely to declare full-scale mobilisation — equivalent to a draft — to raise the number of troops.
The move would be very unpopular for the Russian leader, who has maintained that the invasion of Ukraine is a "special military operation".
Instead, Russia adopted various improvised approaches to boost its forces, including bringing in reservists, offering people large enlistment bonuses of up to $US5,500 and covertly using prisoners.
However, Alexei Tabalov, a lawyer who runs the Conscript's School legal aid group, says he has the impression that everyone who can leave "is ready to run away".
"We're seeing a huge outflow of people who want to leave the war zone — those who have been serving for a long time and those who have signed a contract just recently," Mr Tabalov told the Associated Press.
Meanwhile, battle-hardened Ukrainians are receiving shipments of advanced military equipment from the West and have higher levels of morale, Mr Cancian says.
And there are signs Ukraine has found new ways to exploit flaws in Russia's military machine.
As massive explosions and fires erupted at a military depot in Russia-annexed Crimea on August 17, speculation swirled that Ukraine may have perpetrated an attack on the peninsula.
Ukraine has not officially confirmed or denied responsibility for the attack but it has raised the prospect of a new phase of the war if Ukraine now has the capability to strike deeper into Russian territory.
Mr Cancian believes the next step will "almost certainly be a Ukrainian counteroffensive" in the Kherson area.
If the Ukrainians wrestle back control of the region, it would be significant in a number of ways, by allowing Ukraine to restart its exports and sending a clear signal to the Kremlin that the Ukrainians were still prepared to fight.
Russia will likely continue its campaign, but some experts believe there are signs the "Kremlin is paralysed".
"[Putin's] approach to the current Ukraine conflict has clearly been deluded," Lawrence Freedman, emeritus professor of war studies at King’s College London, told the Guardian.
"You have to assume he didn't realise the gamble he was taking. He genuinely thought Ukraine would crumble quite quickly, and it's hard to know why."
With Putin's expectations for victory still unclear, some believe a series of looming dates could offer some possible insights.
Putin's coming opportunities: A rumoured vote, a big birthday and a looming ban
As the six-month anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine passes, Putin appears to be digging in politically and militarily, according to Mr Cancian.
"I think he plans to stay where he is. … I think that for [Putin], victory looks like hunkering down where he is," he said.
"It's not the victory that he wanted, but he seems willing to settle for that."
There are, however, a few key dates looming for Putin that could give him an out if he wishes to avoid a war of attrition that extends for a generation.
Russia's regional elections are held on September 11 and there are reports that Putin may force referendums in four Ukrainian regions to be held on the same day.
Large swathes of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson are under Russian control, with some schools in the area already forced to teach a Kremlin-friendly curriculum.
The ballot would ask eastern Ukrainians if they wished to become Russians.
With a long history of dubious election results that have handed Putin increasingly large victories, the bogus referendum could be an excuse for a dramatic annexation.
"Russia is beginning to roll out a version of what you could call an annexation playbook very similar to the one we saw in 2014," said US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby last month.
In 2014, Russia invaded and then annexed the Crimean Peninsula, a region considered by much of the world to be Ukrainian.
It would be an audacious move by Putin, one that would potentially give him a huge swathe of Ukrainian territory that finally connects Russia to Crimea.
He might even be able to use the annexation as an excuse to end the war before his birthday in early October.
Russian chess grandmaster-turned-Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov said he suspected Putin would want a big win for his milestone celebration.
"Putin's propaganda goal is to declare victory on October 7, which is his 70th birthday," he told Polish media last month.
"I am almost sure of this because dictators love various anniversaries."
Putin's land grab would likely face fierce opposition from Ukraine's military and the West.
But the Russian leader has one more date on the calendar that could help him turn Western outrage into apathy.
On December 5, Europe will ban seaborne imports of Russian crude oil, which could make it difficult to heat homes just as the northern hemisphere is entering winter.
Putin is betting that as energy costs increase, rations are potentially introduced and Europeans shiver through chilly nights, Western support for Ukraine could evaporate.
"I think that's certainly plausible … that the Europeans will get tired, they'll get cold," said Mr Cancian.
"They may push Ukraine to make a deal."
