Russians rally for slain opponent of Putin
MOSCOW — Thousands of protesters marched through Moscow on Saturday to commemorate the first anniversary of the death of Boris Nemtsov, the liberal opposition leader who was gunned down in a still-unsolved killing last February.
Nemtsov’s killing sent shock waves through Russia’s political elite and grass-roots opponents of President Vladimir Putin.
“I came out here for Borya,” said Vladimir Schemelev, a 52-year-old writer and Uber driver who is from Nemtsov’s hometown of Nizhny Novgorod, using an affectionate form of Nemtsov’s first name. “I know who ordered his death. Everyone knows. That man is named Vladimir Putin.”
It was an increasingly rare public reminder that there remain vocal opponents to Putin in Russia despite his popularity in opinion polls and vaunted status on national television. Alternatively harassed and ignored, Russia’s pro-democracy opposition has faded into the background as national attention has instead focused on the simmering conflict in Ukraine and Russia’s military intervention in Syria, as well as an economic recession that has forced Russians to cut back in their daily lives.
“It’s a chance for them to look around and say, ‘We are alive and not afraid,’” said Ekaterina Schulmann, a political scientist and a senior lecturer at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.
Schulmann said that Saturday’s rally would serve as a kind of head count for the liberal and pro-democratic opposition, which will seek new support from those angry about the economy in parliamentary elections this September.
Rally organizers estimated 25,000 people attended, while police said only 7,500 demonstrators came. At the height of the protest movement in late 2011, after vote manipulation provoked public outrage, more than 100,000 anti-Putin protesters surged onto Moscow’s streets.
Nemtsov, a former physicist who rose quickly in post-Soviet politics to the post of deputy prime minister, was known as a champion of democratic reforms and later a devoted foe of Putin. Once considered a possible heir to Boris Yeltsin, post-Soviet Russia’s first president, Nemtsov joined the opposition and demonstrated for liberal reform as Putin consolidated power.
The march was the largest opposition gathering since a similar number turned out to mourn Nemtsov two days after he was shot late at night as he and a companion walked across a bridge near the Kremlin. The brutality so close to the center of Russian power both frightened and angered supporters of the beleaguered opposition.
City authorities denied march organizers permission to hold a procession to the bridge where Nemtsov was killed, but approved another route in central Moscow. For hours after the march, thousands also visited the bridge, filing past in a steady stream and laying flowers at the makeshift memorial.
U.S. Ambassador John Tefft laid a wreath at the bridge, saying he came to express hope that “some of the dreams that Boris Nemtsov had will come true in Russia.” The ambassadors of European Union countries planned to pay their respects at the bridge today.
Analysts said they expect that the economy rather than the political situation will drive protest sentiment in 2016. There have been some small, scattered demonstrations already, including workers protesting cuts at a train factory in Nizhny Tagil, truckers opposed to new road tolls outside Moscow and workers demanding back pay at a Sbarro restaurant in Moscow.
Vladimir Milov, an opposition activist and president of the Institute of Energy Policy in Moscow, said that the opposition was seeking to build its base among social protesters but added “not to expect changes overnight.”
“I don’t see one big turning point or tipping point,” Milov said. “But I see an expansion of people who realize what’s really going on in this country. The numbers will grow, and this will bring forces who demand a change of course in Russia into the mainstream.”
Rallies in memory of Nemtsov were held in dozens of Russian cities, including in St. Petersburg, where a couple thousand people turned out. But most were small.
In Voronezh, just a few dozen people took to the streets and unknown young men attacked the protesters with green dye and flour. In Nizhny Novgorod, the capital of the region where Nemtsov served as governor in the 1990s, several hundred people participated, including the mayor.
Many opposition supporters said that even if Putin had no direct hand in Nemtsov’s killing, he bears responsibility for encouraging a truculent authoritarianism.
“Nemtsov’s death was the result of the atmosphere of hatred in our country,” said 78-year-old demonstrator Pavel Movshovich.
Most of the demonstrators in Moscow Saturday were veterans of the protest movement, bearing posters with portraits of Nemtsov or placards urging demonstrators to “struggle.” Some attacked Ramzan Kadyrov, the strongman leader of Russia’s volatile Chechnya region, whom Nemtsov’s closest allies have accused of ordering the assassination.
Some former members of a Chechen special-forces unit believed to be under Kadyrov’s control have been arrested for the killing, while investigators have complained that others have disappeared or are being shielded from answering questions.