Extracted from: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/27/russian-opposition-politician-boris-nemtsov-shot-dead-moscow-reports
Former deputy PM and critic of Vladimir Putin who was due to lead major rally on Sunday was killed near the Kremlin
The immediate reaction in Moscow was one of shock and amazement. While there has been a noticeable crackdown on opposition since Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012, and especially since the conflict in Ukraine, no major political figure has been killed in Russia for a decade. Many previous contract killings, such as that of the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006, were never solved.Barack Obama called on Russia’s government to perform a “prompt, impartial and transparent” investigation to bring Nemtsov’s killers to justice. Obama said Nemtsov was a “tireless advocate” for Russia and the rights of its citizens and praised him for fighting corruption. The pair met in Moscow in 2009, Obama said, when the Russian was willing to “share his candid views with me’’. He said the Russian people had “lost one of the most dedicated and eloquent defenders of their rights’’.
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| Boris Nemtsov speaking at an opposition rally in Moscow in March 2012. Photograph: Sergei Chirikov/EPA |
Prominent Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov has been shot dead in Moscow. Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister and a sharp critic of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, was reportedly shot four times in the back by a killer in a passing car.
The killing took place in the very centre of Moscow late on Friday evening on a bridge near St Basil’s Cathedral and the Kremlin, two days before Nemtsov was due to lead a major opposition rally in Moscow.
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the president would take the investigation into Nemtsov’s death under “personal control”, and that he believed the killing to be a provocation.
“Putin noted that this cruel killing has all the signs of a hit, and is a pure provocation,” said Peskov. He said Putin offered condolences to Nemtsov’s family.
Nemtsov, 55, was deputy prime minister during the 1990s in the government of Boris Yeltsin. He had written a number of reports in recent years linking Putin and his inner circle to corruption, and was one of the most well-known politicians among Russia’s small and beleaguered opposition.
Footage from the scene showed police experts examining the corpse of a man, dressed in jeans and lying on the tarmac, with the domes of St Basil’s in the background. Fellow opposition politicians confirmed the news, while a police spokeswoman said a manhunt was under way for the killer.
“He was shot four times in the back, as a result of which he died,” Elena Alekseyeva told Russian television. She added that the killer escaped in a light-coloured car. Other official sources told Russian media that Nemtsov had been walking with a female companion, who was unharmed, at the time of the killing. The woman was reportedly a Ukrainian national and was taken for questioning by police. A representative of Russia’s investigative committee at the scene of the murder said investigators were considering “all possible versions”.
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| The body of Boris Nemtsov, covered with plastic, with St Basil’s Cathedral in the background.Photograph: Dmitry Sereryakov/AFP/Getty Images |
Just hours before his death, Nemtsov had appeared on Ekho Moskvy radio calling on Muscovites to attend an opposition march planned for Sunday. The march against Putin’s government and the war in Ukraine was due to take place in a suburb of Moscow. One of the other organisers of the march, Alexei Navalny, was jailed on 19 February for 15 days. Nemtsov himself had been detained briefly a number of times in recent years for taking part in political rallies, and was seen as one of the old guard of the Russian opposition.
“Today before the programme he asked me if I wasn’t scared to have him on air,” Alexei Venediktov, the editor-in-chief of Ekho Moskvy, wrote on Twitter. “It wasn’t me who needed to be scared.”
“We will answer Nemtsov’s murder with everyone coming out to the rally on 1 March, it’s the best thing we can do for now,” wrote Gennady Gudkov, another opposition politician, on Twitter.
Britain has said it will follow closely investigations into the killing. A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “We are shocked and saddened by news … We deplore this criminal act. Those responsible must be brought to justice. We will continue to follow the situation closely.”
The immediate reaction in Moscow was one of shock and amazement. While there has been a noticeable crackdown on opposition since Putin returned to the Kremlin in 2012, and especially since the conflict in Ukraine, no major political figure has been killed in Russia for a decade. Many previous contract killings, such as that of the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006, were never solved.Barack Obama called on Russia’s government to perform a “prompt, impartial and transparent” investigation to bring Nemtsov’s killers to justice. Obama said Nemtsov was a “tireless advocate” for Russia and the rights of its citizens and praised him for fighting corruption. The pair met in Moscow in 2009, Obama said, when the Russian was willing to “share his candid views with me’’. He said the Russian people had “lost one of the most dedicated and eloquent defenders of their rights’’.
Russian pro-democracy activist and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov said on his Facebook page: “Devastated to hear of the cold-blooded murder of my long-time opposition colleague Boris Nemtsov in central Moscow, quite close to the Kremlin.
“Shot four times, once for each child he leaves behind. A man of Boris’s quality no longer fit Putin’s Russia.
“He always believed Russia could change from the inside and without violence; after 2012 I disagreed with this. When we argued, Boris would tell me I was too hasty and that in Russia you had to live a long time to see change. Now he’ll never see it. Rest In Peace.”
Earlier this month, Nemtsov gave an interview in which he said he was scared that Putin would try to have him killed. A self-assured and colourful character, Nemtsov enjoyed the media spotlight and never minced his words. He came to prominence as a reform-minded governor in the Nizhny Novgorod region during the 1990s, before he was named deputy prime minister under Yeltsin.
He had criticised Putin and his regime both for corruption and for the recent war in Ukraine, which he said was manufactured by Putin. He was featured in a number of lists of traitors and members of a supposed “fifth column” inside Russia published by pro-Kremlin and nationalist figures.
Putin himself has spoken of a “fifth column” in the country and, in recent weeks, politicians and nationalists launched an “anti-Maidan” movement in Russia and said they would not allow opposition politicians to create a Ukrainian-style uprising in Moscow, suggesting that the opposition was working at the behest of foreign enemies of Russia.
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