Western leaders on Saturday condemned the drive-by shooting of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, as he was walking across a bridge near the Kremlin. US President Barack Obama decried the "brutal" and "vicious murder" of Nemtsov, which came ahead of a major opposition rally planned for Sunday, and called on Russia to conduct an impartial probe.
French President Francois Hollande called the killing a "hateful murder" of a "defender of democracy". A constant stream of people laid flowers and set candles at the site of the murder on Saturday morning, with police closing off one lane of traffic to let them through, an AFP reporter saw.
The Kremlin said Putin had taken personal control of the investigation. Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the murder of the 55-year-old former deputy prime minister bore "the hallmarks of a contract killing" and described it as a provocation. President Vladimir Putin vowed to punish the killers of Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov as Russian opposition figures denounced what they called a "political murder" and Western leaders called for a full probe.
The 55-year-old former deputy premier, a vocal Putin critic prominent at opposition rallies, was shot in the back several times shortly before midnight Friday as he walked across a bridge a stone's throw from the Kremlin walls. The brazen assassination is the latest in a string of murders of opposition figures in Putin's 15 years in power and recalls the shooting of anti-Kremlin reporter Anna Politkovskaya, gunned down on Putin's birthday in October 2006.
Putin blamed the assassination on foes trying to discredit the Kremlin, but said in a message to the victim's mother that "everything will be done so that the organisers and perpetrators of a vile and cynical murder get the punishment they deserve." Allies of Nemtsov, a long-time anti-corruption crusader who served as deputy premier under Boris Yeltsin, linked his death to his political activities.
Hours before the killing, he went on air to urge Russians to join an opposition rally Sunday against the Kremlin stance in Ukraine. "There is already a list of unsolved political murders and attack in Russia," Amnesty International said. "We cannot allow Boris Nemtsov to become just another name on this list." On Saturday a steady stream of mourners, many in tears, filed across the bridge, heaping flowers and photos of Nemtsov at the spot where he fell.
Russian state television - which in recent years has denied Nemtsov airtime - gave lavish coverage to his murder. Investigators said gunmen fired at least eight shots from a moving car as Nemtsov walked with a woman who was not injured. Russian television named her as 23-year-old Ukrainian model Anna Duritskaya. Opposition figures said his death was linked to his outspoken opposition to Putin and in particular his criticism of Russia's stand on the Ukraine conflict. They pointed the finger at a climate of hatred whipped up by the Kremlin.
"The political responsibility for this murder lies with the authorities and personally President Putin - those who started and are fighting a war and are running a propaganda campaign of hatred in its support," former Yabloko liberal party leader Grigory Yavlinsky wrote on Facebook. "If a few days ago, people were walking round with a placard saying 'let's finish off the fifth column', and today Nemtsov is killed, then let's think what will happen tomorrow," said a fellow deputy prime minister under Yeltsin, Anatoly Chubais, referring to a pro-Kremlin rally.
Opposition leader Alexei Navalny questioned how Nemtsov could have been killed, saying he would have been under surveillance ahead of Sunday's planned rally. "I can't believe that yesterday night he could have strolled towards the Kremlin without being watched," he wrote in his blog.
The last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, quoted by Interfax, said the killing was aimed at "destabilising the situation in the country, at heightening confrontation" with the West. Speaking on radio just hours before his murder, Nemtsov sounded upbeat and urged Russians to join a major opposition rally planned for Sunday. "The key political demand is an immediate end to the Ukraine war," he said on popular Echo of Moscow radio, adding that Putin should quit.
The current regime has reached "a dead-end in both domestic and foreign policies. They should go," said Nemtsov, who reportedly was compiling a report on Russia's involvement in the Ukraine conflict. After working as a research scientist in the late Soviet era, Nemtsov rose to prominence as governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region in central Russia and became a vice prime minister in the late 1990s under the presidency of Boris Yeltsin.
After leaving parliament in 2003, he led several opposition parties and groups. A passionate orator with a rock star image and popular with women, Nemtsov was a key speaker at mass opposition rallies against Putin's return to the Kremlin. He wrote a series of reports critical of corruption and misspending under Putin. In 2013, he said up to $30 billion of the estimated $50 billion assigned to the Olympic Games that Russia was to host in Sochi had gone missing. The Kremlin has denied the claims. "This is payback for the fact that Boris consistently, for many, many years fought for Russia to be a free democratic country," opposition leader Mikhail Kasyanov, who served as prime minister under Putin, told reporters after visiting the murder scene.
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