WASHINGTON — At a Washington city council meeting this past week, Zhanna Nemtsova held aloft a blue sign with Russian script in white. The words, she said, translated as “Nemtsov Bridge.” The sign itself was a copy of ones left on a stretch of sidewalk in Moscow where her father, the Russian democratic activist Boris Y. Nemtsov, was gunned down in 2015.

American officials have waged a bitter battle with Russia after accusing Moscow of meddling in the 2016 presidential election. The fight has also hit the streets of the American capital — if only symbolically.

The council was considering whether to rename a block outside the Russian Embassy in honor of Mr. Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and sharp critic of President Vladimir V. Putin. Local officials listened sympathetically as Ms. Nemtsova, who flew in from Germany for the meeting, described how an impromptu shrine in Moscow to her late father, erected on a bridge just blocks from Red Square, keeps being dismantled by Russian officials.

“For now, we cannot do it in Russia because of unprecedented resistance, but we have a chance to do it here,” she said. “And here, it will be difficult to dismantle.”