Sunday Times 2
Russian opposition leader Nemtsov shot dead near Kremlin
View(s):MOSCOW, Feb 28 (AFP) -Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, was gunned down while walking in sight of the Kremlin late Friday, prompting an international chorus of condemnation.
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| The body of Boris Nemtsov(left) is covered with plastic on Moskvoretsky bridge near St. Basil cathedral (right) (AFP) | |
The Kremlin decried as a provocation the murder of the 55-year-old former deputy prime minister, which came ahead of an opposition rally he was set to lead this weekend and sent shock waves across the country.
US President Barack Obama led condemnation of the “brutal” and “vicious murder” of Nemtsov, whom he had met on a visit to Moscow, and called on Russia to conduct an impartial probe.
Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian leader had taken the investigation “under personal control”.
The murder of the outspoken critic of Russia’s involvement in Ukraine, on a bridge near the Kremlin, “bears the hallmarks of a contract killing,” Peskov said on radio, describing it as a provocation.
The brazen assassination was one of the most highest-profile killings during Putin’s 15 years in power and recalled the shooting of anti-Kremlin reporter Anna Politkovskaya, who was gunned down on Putin’s birthday in 2006.
Investigators said Nemtsov was shot atno fewer than 7-8 times from a car by unidentified assailants as he was walking with a Ukrainian woman along a bridge just metres (yards) from the Kremlin.
Interior ministry spokeswoman Yelena Alekseyeva said Nemtsov was hit by four bullets.
‘Beyond imagination’
Speaking on radio just hours before his murder, Nemtsov sounded upbeat and urged Russians to take to the streets and join a major opposition rally planned for today.
“The key political demand is an immediate end to the Ukraine war,” he said on popular Echo of Moscow radio, adding that Putin should quit.
After working as a research scientist in the late Soviet era, Nemtsov rose to prominence as governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region in central Russia and became a vice prime minister in the late 1990s under the presidency of Boris Yeltsin.
After leaving parliament in 2003, he led several opposition parties and groups.
An accomplished orator with a rock star image and popular with women, Nemtsov was one of the key speakers at mass opposition rallies against Putin’s return to the Kremlin in 2012.
He developed a reputation for writing critical reports about corruption and other misspending under Putin.
In 2013, he said up to $30 billion of the estimated $50 billion assigned to the Olympic Games Russia was to host in Sochi had gone missing.
The Kremlin has denied the claims.
“This is payback for the fact that Boris consistently, for many, many years fought for Russia to be a free democratic country,” opposition leader Mikhail Kasyanov, who served as prime minister under Putin, told reporters after viewing the scene of the murder.
“In the 21st century, in 2015, a leader of the opposition is shot dead by the Kremlin walls. It is beyond imagination.”