Ksenia Sobchak, an opposition-minded Russian journalist and the daughter of Putin’s erstwhile patron Anatoly Sobchak, writes in Snob.Ru: “In fact, in some ways it would be less alarming if Putin had ordered the murder of Nemtsov. It would be viewed as terrible, but nonetheless it would be the system. A controlled system. He ordered – they carried out."
She adds, "But it seems to me that alas this is not what happened. This isn’t a Putin that gave an order to murder, but a Putin who has created a hellish terminator and has lost control of it.”
Read the full piece here, in Russian.
Here is video from earlier today of members of the Russian opposition laying flowers for Nemtsov.
Over 200 people paid tribute to Nemtsov in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported. The local opposition is also planning a march in memory of the slain Russian politician for March 1.
Brian Whitmore, author of the Power Vertical blog, writes of a new "Hybrid Great Terror" unfolding in Russia:
Exactly one year after Putin launched a hybrid war in Ukraine with the appearance of the storied "little green men" in Crimea, the killing of Nemtsov -- by men shooting from a little white car -- appears to mark an escalation of what can be described as a hybrid campaign of terror against Russia’s beleaguered and largely ineffectual opposition.
Like the hybrid war against Ukraine, Putin’s war at home, his Hybrid Great Terror campaign against his domestic critics, uses multiple methods: a well-honed disinformation campaign, legal machinations, stage-managed public demonstrations, and indiscriminate violence.
Aleksandr Khinshteyn, a lawmaker from the pro-Putin United Russia party, writes on Twitter, "I proposed naming a street in Nizhny [Novgorod] after Nemtsov on air with @VRSoloviev. As its first governor, he did a lot for the region."
There are still many people at the Nemtsov murder site. "Here people may have decreased, but there are still many," writes Twitter user Beslan Uspanov.
A BBC report on Nemtsov from 1997 portrays him as a possible successor to Russian President Boris Yeltsin, and captures how his political star was once on the rise: