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 contract killing last February.
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55-year-old Nemtsov, an opposition leader and former deputy prime minister, was gunned down near the Kremlin walls late in the evening of February 27, 2015, as he walked home with his girlfriend from a restaurant.
Prominent opposition politicians such as Ilya Yashin, a longtime ally of Nemtsov, former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and anti-corruption blogger Alexi Navalyn also attended the event in central Moscow, where supporters laid flowers at the spot on the bridge near Red Square where Nemtsov was killed by four shots.
“We are here today to honour his memory, the values for which he stood and to express our hope for the future that some of the dreams that Boris Nemtsov had will come true in Russian Federation”.
Opposition-minded Russians accuse the Kremlin of waging a campaign to erase Nemtsov’s memory. In Nizhny Novgorod, the capital of the region where Nemtsov served as governor in the 1990s, several hundred people participated, including the mayor.
“It is the job of the FSB and other agencies to do everything to thwart the activities of those who are trying or may try to use nationalistic, xenophobic, and radical slogans aimed at driving a wedge in our society”, Putin said, according to a text released by the Kremlin.
In an interview with the magazine Sobesednik previous year prior to his death, Nemtsov said he feared Putin would have him killed because of his opposition to the war in Ukraine.
“I am reading your [secret service] reports that I regularly receive, both the summarized and detailed ones proving that unfortunately our “enemies across the border” are preparing for the coming elections”.
Putin’s comments echo the Kremlin’s frequent contention that political dissent in Russian Federation is funded and organized by Western forces that seek to undermine the country and force Putin from office.
Russian Federation is holding nationwide parliamentary elections in September this year.
Nemtsov’s family and allies insist the authorities have failed to bring the masterminds to justice and point the finger of blame at Chechnya’s Moscow-backed strongman Ramzan Kadyrov – and the Kremlin itself.
Zhanna Nemtsova, the daughter of the murdered Russian politician, has earlier demanded that Kadyrov should be questioned as a witness in the case. At the same time, he tried to secure his position by taking a posture of obedience.
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“The nation’s leadership needs to find another person so that my name isn’t used against my people”, he said Saturday in televised remarks.
