Putin critic and anti-Ukraine war leader, Boris Nemtsov murdered
A leading Russian opposition politician, former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, has been shot dead in Moscow, Russian officials say.
An unidentified attacker in a white car shot Nemtsov four times in the back as he crossed the Bolshoy Kammeny Bridge in central Moscow in view of the Kremlin, police say.
A grainy video broadcast on Russian state TV reportedly show the man crossing the bridge and being shot.
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“The surveillance camera video is grainy and shot from far away, so that the figures walking across the bridge are barely discernable. At the moment when TV Center, the station, which is controlled by the Moscow city government, says the shooting occurs, a snowplow blocks the view of the two people said to be Nemtsov and his companion,” noted ABC, adding that they were unable to validate the video.
He died hours after appealing for support for a march on Sunday in Moscow against the war in Ukraine, criticizing Vladimir Putin.
The Russian President has condemned the murder and has assumed “personal control” of the investigation into the killing, said Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
“Witnesses to the killing are being questioned, and the crime scene is being carefully examined,” Russian Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said.
Investigators said the murder could have been “a provocation aimed at destabilizing the country”.
The investigative committee said in a statement that several motives for the killing were being considered including “Islamic extremism”.
US President Barack Obama condemned the “brutal murder” and called on the Russian government to conduct a “prompt, impartial and transparent investigation.”
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko described Nemtsov as a “bridge between Ukraine and Russia”.
“The murderers’ shot has destroyed it. I think it is not by accident,” he said in a statement published on his administration’s Facebook page.
In a recent interview, Nemtsov had said he feared Mr Putin would have him killed because of his opposition to the war in Ukraine.
