Thousands march in Moscow for slain Putin critic

MOSCOW (AFP) — Thousands marched through central Moscow on Sunday in memory of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov ahead of the second anniversary of his murder.

The 55- year- old former deputy prime minister was gunned down near the Kremlin on Feb. 27, 2015.

Five Chechen men from Russia’s volatile North Caucasus are on trial for carrying out a contract hit, but those who ordered the killing have not been brought to justice.

“We came to pay tribute to the honesty and bravery of Boris Nemtsov,” pensioner Galina Zolina told AFP, clutching a bunch of red carnations.

“We want to show the authorities that we haven’t forgotten.”

Nemtsov, a charismatic figure who went from Kremlin insider under Boris Yeltsin to one of Putin’s fiercest foes, was shot four times in the back as he walked home across a bridge with his girlfriend.

Sunday’s march was permitted by the authorities, but was not allowed to go past a makeshift memorial officials have repeatedly sought to dismantle at the spot where he was killed.

Some 15,000 demonstrators, according to an estimate by the organizers and AFP, took part.

Heavily escorted by police, they waved Russian flags and posters criticizing the Kremlin and Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, which Nemtsov had opposed right up to his death.

In one incident, an unidentified assailant threw what appeared to be a green antiseptic at former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, current chairman of the opposition People’s Freedom Party.

Kasyanov, his face covered in blobs of green liquid, stayed in his position on the front line of the march.