Carrying flowers, portraits and signs that said “I am not afraid”, thousands of Russians marched on Sunday in Moscow to mourn opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, whose slaying on the streets of the capital has shaken Russia’s beleaguered opposition.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has marginalised and intimidated his political opponents, jailing some and driving others into exile, since mass anti-Putin protests swept Moscow in 2011 and 2012. Nemtsov, 55, was among the few prominent opposition figures who had refused to be cowed.
The mourners marched to the bridge near the Kremlin on Sunday where Nemtsov was gunned down shortly before Friday midnight. The mood was somber, with a heavy police presence. Ilya Yashin, a friend and fellow opposition leader, said he hoped the killing would not frighten people.
“Essentially it is an act of terror. It is a political murder aimed at frightening the population, or the part of the population that supported Nemtsov and did not agree with the Government,” Yashin told the Associated Press.
“I hope we won’t get scared, that we will continue what Boris was doing.” The march could energise the opposition, but it could also prove to be a brief expression of emotions that dissipates in a climate of fear. Russia’s federal investigative agency said it was looking into several possible motives for Nemtsov’s killing.
The first possibility, the Investigative Committee said, was that the killing was aimed at destabilising the political situation in Russia and Nemtsov was a “sacrificial victim for those who do not shun any method for achieving their political goals.”
This suggestion echoed comments by Putin’s spokesman and other Russian politicians that the attack was a “provocation” against the State.
The consensus of political commentators on State television was that the killing served the interests of Russia’s enemies. Yashin, however, said Russia’s leadership and specifically Putin bore full political responsibility for Nemtsov’s death.
“It was President Putin who created this atmosphere of hate in our country, the atmosphere of intolerance, which one way or another materialised in the bullet that killed my friend Boris Nemtsov,” Yashin said.
As a former deputy Prime Minister and longtime politician, Nemtsov retained strong ties among Russia’s political and business elite, making his killing additionally shocking.
West condemns Nemtsov murder as Putin vows to punish killers
Moscow: President Vladimir Putin has vowed to punish the killers of Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov as Russian opposition figures denounced what they called a “political murder” and Western leaders called for a full probe.
The 55-year-old former deputy premier, a vocal Putin critic prominent at opposition rallies, was shot in the back several times just before Friday midnight as he walked across a bridge, a stone’s throw from the Kremlin walls.
The brazen assassination is the latest in a string of murders of opposition figures in Putin’s 15 years in power and recalls the shooting of anti-Kremlin reporter Anna Politkovskaya, gunned down on Putin’s birthday in October 2006.
Putin blamed the latest killing on foes trying to discredit the Kremlin, but vowed in a message to the victim’s mother to do all he could so “the organisers and perpetrators of a vile and cynical murder get the punishment they deserve.”