MOSCOW — Russian opposition leaders on Saturday accused the Kremlin of being behind the death of a towering figure of post-Soviet politics, Boris Nemtsov, as they struggled to come to grips with the highest-profile assassination of President Vladimir Putin’s 15 years in power.
Nemtsov was gunned down late Friday, steps from the Kremlin and underneath the swirling domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral — the heart of power in Russia and one of the most secure areas in the nation. The slaying of one of Putin’s most biting critics swept a wave of fresh vulnerability over those in the opposition, and some expressed new fears for their lives.
Putin and other allies said that the assassination was a provocation intended to discredit the Kremlin. There were no immediate suspects brought into custody in the drive-by shooting. Authorities said they were working hard to track down a light-colored sedan that was captured on surveillance cameras as Nemtsov crossed a bridge over the Moscow River on an unseasonably warm February night.
At the crime scene on a dreary Moscow Saturday, hundreds of people gathered to lay red roses and white carnations. Many of them were in tears.
A Kremlin spokesman said that there were no grounds to fear that other opposition leaders would be killed.
“The murder is monstrous, and, as the president said, it has all the markings of a contract killing,” Dmitry Peskov told the opposition-leaning Dozhd television channel. “But to judge on that basis that this is the beginning of a series of such killings is overly emotional, and it's wrong.”
On Saturday afternoon, state-run news outlets reported that investigators had found a white Lada sedan that they believed was used in the killing. Images that they broadcast showed a car with license plates from Ingushetia, a tumultuous Muslim-majority province in the Caucasus that has long been plagued with extremist violence.
Opposition leaders said they had canceled a Sunday rally that they had hoped would breathe new life into a movement that has struggled under the weight of a wave of nationalism that followed the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula a year ago. The 55-year-old Nemstov had been one of the lead organizers. Instead, his allies said they planned to hold a memorial march for him the same day in central Moscow.
It was unclear whether the slaying would spur new support for the beleaguered opposition movement or whether it would simply be further marginalized, repressed by fear and the silencing of one of its most prominent voices.
“It’s not decided, but it could go both directions. Toward more cruelty or actually some change in the regime, as well, if we figure out how to use this momentum,” said Leonid Volkov, an opposition leader who had been organizing the rally with Nemtsov.
“Of course the personal perception of safety has just been enormously shattered. No one considered that someone could be just shot down. The regime was used to imprisoning people,” Volkov said. “It’s a new era in Russian opposition politics.”
Nemtsov’s death was a bitter bookend to the hopes that had accompanied the dashing, Western-style politician in the heady years after the breakup of the Soviet Union as he took a lead role in plunging Russia into capitalism. Now many of those reforms have been undone, with Putin taking near-absolute, personal control of the country and re-nationalizing broad swathes of the economy.
Although Putin condemned Nemtsov’s death, Russian authorities appeared to be making few concessions to the opposition in its wake. The national Internet watchdog briefly blocked access to the blog of Alexei Navalny, the leader of a younger generation of Kremlin critics. Hours after the assassination, investigators were at Nemtsov’s Moscow apartment, searching his files, confiscating his computer hard drive and questioning his neighbors, the Interfax news service reported.
Navalny, who after vast anti-Putin rallies in 2011 and 2012 had eclipsed Nemtsov as Russia’s preeminent opposition leader, is currently in jail serving a 15-day sentence for distributing fliers promoting the rally. From jail on Saturday, he said: “I am so deeply shocked that I cannot even find words.”
“Boris came here a couple of days ago, he was so lively and energetic, full of plans,” Navalny wrote on his Facebook page, via an associate. “He immediately charmed the policemen, chatted with them cheerfully, explained to them why it is good for them to support the demands of the Spring march, gave them brochures with his report.”
Nemtsov was slain as he was walking home from having late-night drinks at a cafe inside GUM, the glittering department store on Red Square that was in many ways a symbol of the work he did to drag Russia into the capitalist age. The assassination, literally at the doorstep of the Kremlin, was a bitter symbol for those in the opposition movement of their powerful new vulnerability.
Nemtsov allies said that he had been preparing to release a report detailing evidence that Russian soldiers were fighting in Ukraine alongside pro-Russian rebels, an accusation the Kremlin has hotly denied. Two years ago, he prepared an investigation that he said uncovered a vast corruption scheme in the lead-up to the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi — an effort that was said to have particularly irked Putin.
Putin’s rhetoric Saturday was conciliatory, as he sent a condolence telegram to Nemtsov’s mother.
“Boris Nemtsov left his mark on the history of Russia in politics and public life,” Putin said. “Everything will be done so that the organizers and perpetrators of this vile and cynical murder are punished.”
Theories swirled Saturday about who was behind the shooting. Members of the opposition generally agreed that the killing was politically motivated. There were differing opinions as to whether it was actually tied to the Kremlin or whether it was simply the product of a new climate of aggression that Putin has unleashed in the year since the annexation of Crimea.
“There is only one conclusion,” opposition leader and Nemtsov ally Nemtsovally Vladimir Milov wrote on his blog. “The murder of Boris Nemtsov is connected to the authorities.” He said the timing of the killing as well, as its location in the high-security heart of Moscow gave him little doubt.
Other Kremlin critics have been killed over the years, including journalist Anna Politkovskaya and former FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 and lawyer Sergey Magnitsky in 2008. But few people have been brought to justice for the deaths.
Authorities discounted any Kremlin link, saying they were examining a wide range of possibilities, including connections to Islamist extremism, to Ukraine, to business dealings or to personal disputes, said Russian Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin.
“The investigation is analyzing several theories, including the murder as an act of provocation to destabilize the political situation in the country,” Markin said in a statement. “Nemtsov could have been a kind of sacrifice for those who stop at nothing to attain their political ends.”
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