(Bloomberg) -- Opposition leaders called on Russians toattend a vigil Sunday in Moscow to mourn politician BorisNemtsov following his murder last night near the Kremlin.
Moscow officials have agreed to let the rally run throughthe city center and end at the location where Nemtsov was shotto death, Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister andopposition leader, told Bloomberg.
Nemtsov, a politician who rose to prominence in the rush ofreform after the Soviet collapse and then fell out withPresident Vladimir Putin, was killed while walking across abridge near St. Basil’s Cathedral with a woman from Ukraine,according to Interior Ministry spokeswoman Elena Alekseeva. Hiskilling comes as the U.S. and its European allies are locked inthe most-tense standoff with Russia since the Cold War.
World leaders expressed dismay over the murder and calledon Putin to ensure that the killers are brought to justice.Russian state television broadcast extensive coverage of theshooting and showed scenes of citizens visiting the locationwhere he was killed. Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, calledthe shooting an “extreme provocation.”
“This is not a provocation, this is a reprisal,”Kasyanov said in a phone interview. “It’s intimidation; wewon’t be frightened. It’s up to the investigators to determinewho ordered the shooting.”
Nemtsov was killed around 11:15 p.m. local time Fridayafter a car approached him and fired several shots, four ofwhich hit him in the back, Alekseeva said. The country’s maincriminal investigative committee is looking at a number ofpossible motives, including whether it was meant as aprovocation to destabilize Russia, Vladimir Markin, the agency’sspokesman, said in a statement.
Death ThreatsMoscow will allow the march Sunday to be held in the citycenter with up to 50,000 people, Alexey Mayorov, head regionalsecurity for the Moscow administration, told the Interfax newsagency. Gulnara Penkova, a city spokeswoman, could notimmediately be reached for confirmation.
Nemtsov had been getting death threats and was working on areport about Putin and Russia’s involvement in the civil war inUkraine, according to Ilya Yashin, an opposition leader.
In 2011, he published a report that focused on how theleader’s friends and relatives benefited from the regime and onthe perks Putin enjoyed himself as the head of an oil-richstate. Putin was prime minister at the time.
Peskov said by phone that “the president noted that thereare all the signs that this was a hit and also an extremeprovocation.” Peskov told Interfax that Putin had ordered aninvestigation into “this cruel murder.”
Leaving FlowersDeputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich started an economicforum today with a minute of silence in memory of Nemtsov. “Ayoung and bright politician. A very gifted man,” Dvorkovichsaid, adding that organizers of the killing should be found andpunished.
Muscovites today brought flowers to the bridge near whichNemtsov was shot. Anatoly Chubais, head of state-owned venturecapital company OAO Rusnano and the mastermind of Russia’s firstprivatization program, was among those shown on televisionleaving flowers at the location of the murder.
The U.S. and European Union, which imposed economicsanctions on Russia after Putin annexed the Crimea from Ukrainelast year, accuse him of fomenting an armed separatist revolt ineastern Ukraine, a charge Putin denies.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is “dismayed” byNemtsov’s murder and calls on Putin to ensure that the murder isfully investigated, Steffen Seibert, her chief spokesman, saidin a statement.
Critics KilledU.S. President Barack Obama said in a statement: “Iadmired Nemtsov’s courageous dedication to the struggle againstcorruption in Russia and appreciated his willingness to sharehis candid views with me when we met in Moscow in 2009.”
Other Putin critics who have been killed in recent yearsinclude Alexander Litvinenko, a former Russian spy who died inLondon in 2006 after drinking radioactive tea, and AnnaPolitkovskaya, a journalist who chronicled corruption underPutin and human-rights abuses during Russia’s conflict withseparatists in Chechnya, who was gunned down in 2006.
Nemtsov, 55, rose to prominence in the 1990s as a pro-reform politician during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin shortlyafter the collapse of the Soviet Union.
His funeral will be held March 3 and he’ll most likely beburied at a Moscow cemetery, Konstantin Merzlikin, secretary ofthe political party co-headed by Nemtsov, told Interfax.
Orange RevolutionNemtsov was governor of Nizhny Novgorod, a region that wasassociated with early efforts to promote a market-orientedtransformation of the Russian economy. He then went to Moscow tobecome a deputy prime minister under Yeltsin.
After Putin succeeded Yeltsin in late 1999, Nemtsov becamea critic and a leader of the opposition movement.
He also served as an adviser to former Ukrainian PresidentViktor Yushchenko, who was swept into power by that country’s2004 Orange Revolution. Putin has frequently warned that thoseevents could serve as a model for Russian anti-governmentactivists.
Nemtsov was “one of not many I can call friend,”Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko wrote on Facebook. “He wasa bridge between Ukraine and Russia. It’s ruined by murderers, Ithink not incidentally.”
To contact the reporters on this story:Ilya Arkhipov in Moscow at
iarkhipov@bloomberg.net;Yuliya Fedorinova in Moscow at
yfedorinova@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story:Balazs Penz at
bpenz@bloomberg.netChad Thomas
