Ukraine Fears Russia Car Bomb Revenge

Fears bombing may prompt Moscow to intensify attacks as Kyiv marks independence

- Dan Sabbagh and Luke Harding

Ukraine is bracing itself for an intensification of Russian missile attacks to coincide with its independence day on Wednesday in the aftermath of the car bomb that killed the daughter of an ultranationalist Russian ideologue who was herself a pro-war propagandist.

The Ukraine’s military said Russia had put five cruise missile-bearing warships and submarines out in the Black Sea and that Moscow was positioning air defence systems in Belarus. Mass events have been banned in Kyiv for four days from today.

Overnight on Saturday, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, had warned that “Russia may try to do something particularly nasty, something particularly cruel” this week as the country celebrates its 31st anniversary of independence from the Soviet Union.

The country’s armed forces also warned last night that Russia had closed the airspace in the Russian border region of Lipetsk, Voronezh, from today until Thursday.

Tensions between the two warring countries were at risk of heightening after the killing of Darya Dugina, whose father is the Russian political commentator Alexander Dugin, on the outskirts of Moscow on Saturday night.

Some Russian hawks tried – without evidence – to blame Ukraine, which in turn denied any involvement in the attack, saying it was “not a terrorist state”.

Last night, a former member of Russia’s Duma now based in Kyiv, who was expelled from Russia for anti-Kremlin activities, claimed that a previously unknown group of anti-Putin Russian partisans was behind the attack.