An outspoken rival of Vladimir Putin was assassinated in the heart of Moscow Friday evening — just two days before he was scheduled to lead a massive protest against the Russian president.
Former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov was walking with a woman on a busy street near the Kremlin when the gunman jumped out of a white car and pumped four bullets into his chest. The killer then got back inside and sped off.
Nemtsov had been a vocal critic of Putin and had published a series of reports accusing the president and his inner circle of corruption.
He said in an interview earlier this month that he was afraid that the president would have him killed, The Guardian reported.
Hours before he died, Nemtsov had called on his fellow Russians to take part in the march, which in addition to protesting Putin was also a demonstration against the war in the Ukraine.
The protest had been scheduled for Sunday in a Moscow suburb.
One of the other organizers, Alexei Navalny, was jailed for 15 days ahead of the march.
Nemtsov, 55, had served as deputy prime minister under the late President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s. He earned a reputation as an economic reformer while he was mayor of one of the country’s biggest cities, Nizhny Novgorod, the BBC said.
Although Putin and his pals have been known to harass opposition figures, the murder of Nemtsov was the first assassination of a political figure in Moscow in a decade, the British newspaper The Independent said.
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, claimed that the murder was merely an attempt at “provocation” — and he would take “personal control” of the investigation, according to The Guardian.
“Putin noted that this cruel killing has all the signs of a hit, and is a pure provocation,” said Peskov.
US Sen John McCain (R-Ariz) tweeted that he was “very saddened’’ by the murder.
McCain had met with Nemtsov in June, 2013, and afterward described him in a tweet as a “friend’’ and “a great champion of human rights.’’
https://twitter.com/SenJohnMcCain/status/571436987976179713
https://twitter.com/SenatorWicker/status/571442715340046336
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