The former deputy prime minister of the country and a father of four, Mr. Nemtsov was a vocal critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Putin expressed his condolences for the shooting Saturday through a spokesman and said he believed it may have been a contract killing. His spokesman said Putin ordered security officials to investigate the killing.
There is a large anti-war rally scheduled for Sunday in Moscow, the first of its kind this year. Mr. Nemtsov, an outspoken critic of the war, was to be the key speaker at the rally, which he helped organize. “If you support stopping Russia’s war with Ukraine,” he had tweeted about the rally. “If you support stopping Putin’s aggression, come to the Spring March in Maryino on 1 March.”
Maryino is a district in Moscow.
He was shot from a vehicle as he walked across the Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge with an unidentified woman. The Kremlin was visible from the bridge. Officials told Russia’s Interfax News Agency that he was shot at about 10:40 p.m. Moscow time on Friday.
Nemtsov, who worked in Boris Yeltsin’s administration in the 90s, recently went on record saying that he feared Putin would have him killed because of his opposition to the war. There is nothing concrete in the events of his death to suggest that Putin had ordered it.
On February 10 in a piece in the Russian online magazine Sobesednik (in Russian only) he expressed fears of being killed by the Russian president.
“I’m afraid Putin will kill me,” he said. “I believe that he was the one who unleashed the war in the Ukraine. I couldn’t dislike him more.”
