The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Russians’farewell to Nemtsov
THOUSANDS OF mourners and dignitaries filed past the white-lined coffin of murdered Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov in the Sakharov Centre yesterday.
Mr Nemtsov was shot dead late on Friday while walking ear the Kremlin in Moscow. No suspects have been arrested.
The killing has deeply shaken Russia’s small, marginalised opposition movement.
Many supporters suspect the killing was ordered by the Kremlin in retaliation for Mr Nemtsov’s criticism of President Vladimir Putin but authorities have suggested several possible motives, including a provocation aimed at tarnishing Mr Putin’s image.
Mr Nemtsov, 55, had been a deputy prime minister under former president BorisYeltsin and was widely seen as a rising young reformer but in the Putin era Mr Nemtsov’s party lost its seats in parliament.
Although his influence in mainstream politics vanished, Mr Nemtsov remained visible as one of Putin’s most vehement critics.
In a radio interview a few hours before his death, he denounced Putin for his “mad, aggressive” policies in the Ukraine crisis.
After the viewing, his body was buried at a cemetery on Moscow’s western edge, as relatives and about 100 bystanders looked on.
Many commentators said that, like other key opposition leaders, Mr Nemtsov was constantly being shadowed by police, so it is hard to imagine that his killing could go unnoticed by them.
His death was the biggest political assassination in Russia since 2006, when another Kremlin foe, journalist Anna Politkovskaya, was shot dead in the lift of her Moscow apartment building.
Five Chechens were convicted in the case last year but it has remained unclear who ordered the killing.
Some observers
speculated
that certain members of a hawkish, isolationist wing of the government could have had a hand in Mr Nemtsov’s death, possibly hoping to provoke outrage abroad and further strain Russia’s ties with the West.