A pro-Kremlin newspaper has reported that investigators are "focusing on" on the possibility that Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov's killing was connected to the conflict in Ukraine.
Without citing specific sources, the daily Izvestia said on March 3 that investigators "are not ruling out that Nemtsov was killed on the orders of the Ukrainian special services."
It reported that that "the organizers of the crime could have been Chechen militants" it said have fought alongside government forces against Russian-backed separatists in the war in eastern Ukraine.
It quoted an unnamed law enforcement source as claiming the organizers were ethnic Chechen Adam Osmayev and his wife, Amina Okuyeva.
Osmayev was arrested in Ukraine in 2012, at Moscow's behest, on suspicion of plotting to kill Russian President Vladimir Putin, but was released in November 2014.
Federal investigators have said a link to the Ukraine conflict is one of several lines of investigation they are pursuing, but they have not commented on the Izvestia report.
The report in Izvestia -- which has become a platform for anti-Western views -- was part of a growing number of Russian statements and Kremlin-allied media reports suggesting the West or Ukraine could have had Nemtsov killed.