Tens of thousands march to honor slain Russian opposition leader
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TENS of thousands of people marched in central Moscow yesterday to honor the memory of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was gunned down near the Kremlin.
A sea of supporters, many waving Russian flags and banners, packed a Moscow square under gray skies before heading to the bridge where the 55-year-old opposition figure was shot in the back shortly before midnight Friday.
Organizers said 70,000 people had turned out, while police estimated the crowd at more than 16,000.
Another 6,000 people, some wrapped in Ukrainian flags, turned out to protest in Russia’s second city, Saint Petersburg.
“I am carrying a Ukrainian flag because he fought for the end of the Ukraine war. And they killed him because of that,” said marcher Vsevolod Nelayev.
Hours before the drive-by killing, Nemtsov had broadcast a radio appeal to supporters to join him at a rally yesterday in Moscow to protest against the Kremlin’s Ukraine stance and demand an end to the war there.
The protest instead was turned into a Nemtsov memorial march, with Moscow authorities approving a turnout of 50,000.
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday vowed to punish the killers as Russian opposition figures denounced what they called a “political murder” and Western leaders called for a full probe.
Nemtsov, a vocal critic of the government and a former deputy premier in the 1990s under Boris Yeltsin, died after being hit with four bullets to the back while crossing a bridge a stone’s throw from the Kremlin, in sight of the golden domes of Saint Basil’s Cathedral.
A woman with him on the bridge was not hurt.
Putin on Saturday denounced the brazen shooting as “a provocation” by political foes.”
The Investigative Committee, which reports directly to Putin, said Nemtsov “might have been sacrificed” to sow instability, and that they were checking any links to the Ukraine conflict.
Tensions with the West over Ukraine and the takeover of Crimea have increasingly polarized Russian society, with most Russians behind Putin but a minority in sharp disagreement.
Nemtsov, a hate figure for pro-Kremlin activists, had long complained of being followed and having his phone tapped. In 2011, assailants mangled his Range Rover by throwing a toilet bowl on its roof.
The former physicist became governor of the central region of Nizhny Novgorod at 32, before serving in Yeltsin’s team.
After leaving parliament in 2003, he led several opposition parties.
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called Nemtsov a “bridge between Ukraine and Russia.”
“The murderers’ shot has destroyed it,” he said on Facebook.
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