Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (Republican-Tennessee) condemned the murder of Boris Nemtsov in a statement:
“The brutal slaying of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov just outside the Kremlin appears to be an attempt to silence those in Russia wanting to see their country move away from the authoritarianism, corruption, and lawlessness of Vladimir Putin’s regime. At the very least, Putin has created an atmosphere that condones and even encourages such actions,” he said. “Boris Nemtsov sought a better future for his people and believed in a strong partnership between our countries. We must remain committed to his vision of a free and democratic Russia that is at peace with itself and its neighbors.”
"People continue to place flowers after midnight at the place of the murder of Boris Nemtsov"
Nadia Tolokonnikova, one of the members of Pussy Riot, says on Facebook that Nemtsov once advised her and her fellow band members to get bodyguards, approaching her at an opposition march.
"We shrugged carelessly, but Boris insisted and thoughtfully offered to help us find him," she writes. "We then did not listen. And he felt danger. But he did not run from it."
NYU Professor and frequent Power Vertical guest Mark Galeotti offers his thoughts on the Nemtsov murder:
My working hypothesis is that Nemtsov was killed by some murderous mavericks, not government agents, nor opposition fanatics. But the reason they felt obliged to go and gun down a frankly past-his-peak anti-government figure is highly likely to be precisely because of the increasingly toxic political climate that clearly is a product of Kremlin agency, in which people like Nemtsov are portrayed as Russophobic minions of the West, enemies of Russia’s people, culture, values and interests.
Read the full piece here.
Low quality closed-circuit telvision footage published by the TV Tsentr Russian television station alleges to show the murder of Nemtsov from afar. It highlights two people walking across the bridge by St Basil's Cathedral toward Bolotnaya Square. They are passed (and eclipsed) by a snow-removal truck. At that point a man is seen emerging quickly from behind the truck and getting into a car which drives off, presumably after the shooting. The truck continues to drive, while a figure -- thought to be Nemtsov's girlfriend -- runs toward the truck which stops for a couple of minutes. Two men are seen inspecting the body, fleeing the scene and then returning to it later.
Russian journalist Oleg Kashin speculates that the latter two men could have been a surveillance detail following Nemtsov from afar.
Nemtsov, in 2012, said that his phone had been tapped on the orders of Putin, in an article on the bugging of the Russian opposition by journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan:
‘I’ve had the same number for a number of years and even though I’ve been aware of everything, I haven’t changed it because I don’t want to waste taxpayers’ money," he said. "On the instructions of Putin, the KGB people and [Vladislav] Surkov, they’ve been eavesdropping on my conversations and leaking everything on the Internet. In the past they leaked my conversations with Chubais and Lisovsky."
Read the full piece here.
"There are more and more flowers," writes opposition organizer Leonid Volkov on Twitter.