Russian authorities will permit opposition leaders to hold a march in Moscow Sunday in memory of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was shot to death Friday after urging people to protest Russian President Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine.
The march takes the place of a planned opposition rally. It was approved almost immediately by city officials, who have granted a permit for 50,000 people to gather and march in Nemtsov’s memory.
Nemtsov was walking across a bridge over the Moscow River with a Ukrainian woman when gunmen drove up and fired from their car window. Russia’s interior minister said Nemtsov was shot four times, within sight of the Kremlin. The woman was not injured.
After police removed Nemtsov’s body, mourners began piling bouquets of flowers at the scene.
Just hours before he was gunned down, Nemtsov appeared on Russia’s Ekho Moskvy radio urging Moscow residents to come out for Sunday’s rally. It was to focus on Russia’s involvement in Ukraine and the economic crisis at home.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Saturday condemned Nemtsov’s murder, calling him a “bridge” between Ukraine and Russia.
U.S. calls for impartial probe
U.S. President Barack Obama denounced the “brutal” murder and called on Russia to carry out a prompt and impartial investigation. He called Nemtsov “a tireless advocate for his country” and “one of the most eloquent defenders” of the rights of the Russian people.
France’s President Francois Hollande also expressed anger at Nemtsov’s death. He called the shooting a “hateful murder” and described Nemtsov as a “defender of democracy.”
A Putin spokesman said the murder bore the hallmarks of a contract killing and described it as a “provocation.” He said the Kremlin will oversee the investigation.
Russia’s Investigative Committee is exploring several lines of inquiry, a spokesman, Vladimir Markin, said Saturday. The crime could be an attempt to destabilize the political situation or it also could be linked with Islamic extremism or the situation in Ukraine, he said.
“First of all, of course, it is the possibility that the murder could be a provocation to destabilize the political situation in Russia,” Markin said. “And Nemtsov could become a sacrificial victim for those who would not stop before using any means to reach their political goals.”
Markin said the committee also was “closely looking into a possibility that the murder could have links with Islamist extremism. The investigation has information that Nemtsov received threats linked to his position about the shooting at the Charlie Hebdo magazine office in Paris.”
Opposed Russian aggression in Ukraine
Nemtsov was a deputy prime minister in the 1990s and many Russian observers predicted he would succeed then-President Boris Yeltsin.
But Yeltsin instead chose Putin as his successor. After Putin’s subsequent election in 2000, Nemtsov became one of Russia’s sharpest and most outspoken critics of the leader, especially since last year’s uprising in Ukraine.
In September, Nemtsov told VOA that Putin wants revenge for Ukraine’s overthrow of its pro-Russian president.
He said Putin fears that what happened in Ukraine could happen in Russia and sees a pro-European Ukraine as a threat to his own power.
In an op-ed titled “Why does Putin wage war with Ukraine?” published in the Kyiv Post in September, Nemtsov blasted the Russian president. “Moreover, Ukraine chose the European way, which implies the rule of law, democracy and change of power,” he wrote. “Ukraine’s success on this way is a direct threat to Putin’s power because he chose the opposite course – a lifetime in power, filled with arbitrariness and corruption.”
In his comments Friday on Ekho Moskvy radio, Nemtsov reiterated his aversion to Putin’s stance on Ukraine, calling it “a mad, aggressive and deadly policy.”
“The country needs political reform,” Nemtsov said. “When power is concentrated in the hands of one person and this person rules forever, this will lead to an absolute catastrophe.”
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