An ex-Russian MP says that the car bomb in Moscow was done by Russian partisans.
Ilya Ponomarev said in Kyiv that the bomb that killed the daughter of a Putin ally was made by an underground group.
A former member of Russia's Duma who was kicked out for being anti-Kremlin said that Russian partisans were behind a car bomb that killed the daughter of a close political ally of Vladimir Putin on the outskirts of Moscow.
Ilya Ponomarev said in Kyiv, where he lives, that the explosion on Saturday night was caused by the National Republican Army. He said that the National Republican Army is an underground group inside Russia that wants to get rid of the Putin regime.
The Guardian has not checked if what Ponomarev says is true. Russia has said that the attack was done by Ukraine, which Kyiv strongly denies.
"The National Republican Army (NRA) did this, as they have done many other partisan actions on Russian soil in recent months," Ponomarev said. He was talking during a 7 p.m. show on February Morning, an opposition TV channel in Russian that he started in Kyiv earlier this year.
He also said, "Yesterday night, something important happened near Moscow. This attack is a new step in the fight against Putinism in Russia. "New, but not the only one."
Darya Dugina, the 30-year-old daughter of Russian political commentator and far-right ideologue Alexander Dugin, was killed in the blast. Both Alexander Dugin and Darya Dugina had been put on a list of people to watch out for by the UK and US for trying to make things worse in Ukraine.
Ponomarev said that partisans inside Russia were ready to do similar attacks against high-profile Kremlin-connected targets like officials, oligarchs, and members of Russia's security agencies.
The former deputy read from what he said was an NRA manifesto: "We declare President Putin a usurper of power and a war criminal who changed the Constitution, started a civil war between the Slavic peoples, and sent Russian soldiers to their certain and senseless deaths. "Poverty and coffins for some, palaces for others: that's the core of his policy." We think that people who don't have a voice have the right to fight back against tyrants. We will get rid of Putin and destroy him!"
In a text message, Ponomarev said that what he said was true. He is a member of Russia's parliament and is on the left. In 2014, he was the only deputy to vote against Crimea being taken over by Russia.
When he was in the US, he couldn't go back to Russia because the Kremlin was angry at him. In 2019, he became a citizen of Ukraine. After the Ukraine was invaded in March, he started February Morning and Rozpartisan, a Telegram channel that reports on anti-war actions in Russian towns and cities.
Putin and Ponomarev have been fighting for a long time. If true, his claim that there is an active underground movement in Russia that wants to kill well-known war supporters would be a dramatic escalation. It is likely to make the Kremlin angry, but it might not necessarily convince them.
The supposed manifesto said that the Russian government and regional governments work with Putin.
"We will kill those who do not give up their power," it said.
Other targets include corrupt businesspeople, the homes and properties of people who don't condemn the Kremlin and its war, and "employees of power structures." It also said that military cargoes and the people who make money from them will be wiped out.
The NRA would not go after civilians, the statement said. It said that Daria Dugina was a fair target and that her father, who supported genocide in Ukraine, was her "faithful companion." It said, "She was a voice calling for violence and murder" in parts of Ukraine that Russia controlled.
Some of the most powerful people in Russia want the Kremlin to respond by going after government officials in Kyiv. "Centers for making decisions!! "Decision-making centers!!!" wrote Margarita Simonyan, the head of the state-funded RT TV station, when she shared a call to bomb the headquarters of the Ukrainian SBU intelligence agency.