According to Voronezh-based regional opposition leader Tolya Kravchenko, activists from the pro-Kremlin AniMaidan movement have disrupted a small antigovernment demonstration in the southwestern Russian city.
The provocateurs, dressed as Cossacks, splashed Zelyonka, a Soviet-era topical antiseptic, on the speakers.
"Highly prepared"
Andrei Soldatov, an expert on Russia's intelligence services and one of Russia's top investigative journalists, tells Bloomberg that Nemtsov's killers were "highly prepared."
The slaying of a high-profile target who was almost certainly under surveillance by security officials shows a high level of preparation, Soldatov said. The crime was executed in an area where there’s no place to park a car or ‘‘hide a killer,” suggesting the use of several teams and meticulous timing, he said.
“It’s all about logistics and coordination,” Soldatov said by phone on Saturday. “You need to have very highly prepared people. Most likely, war veterans with special training, hired professional killers or mid-level security service people.”
The Russian Communist party is holding a previously scheduled demonstration today as well, calling on Medvedev to resign (thereby blaming the country's economic problems on him, not Putin).
Some people there have told reporters they were paid to attend.
"I didn't really want to march under Soviet flags, but I need the money," says this young "protester."
Mikhail Khodorkovsky's Open Russia organization is preemptively providing information about legal help in the event that people get detained today.
Hundreds have come out to demonstrate in Yekaterinburg. One activist estimates 1,500 but we can't confirm number.
Kseniya Sobchak writes about how Nemtsov looked after her fondly when she was a child and her father, Anatoly, was one of Russia's most important politicians; and then, about how they became friends during her adulthood.
"He admired my inner freedom," she says. "He was an honest, sparkling, bright man. He lived fast and died like a true fighter. He was a brilliant orator and was charismatic -- such that there are now no others."
At his last birthday party, this October, he whispered, "'You're cool Sobchack, even if you're a woman.' But from him it was nice to hear."
From Russian cartoonist Sergei Yolkin.
Well known journalist Vladimir Pozner writes that he's been abroad since the murder of Nemtsov.
He says the tone of coverage by U.S., British and French media has been the same: "Directly or indirectly, it is the work of Vladimir Putin." But Pozner himself "strongly" disagrees.
"Boris Efimovich Nemtsov long ago stopped representing any sort of political threat to Putin and his entourage," he says. "Yes, he was one of the most prominent opposition figures, but the opposition today is negligible."
He also dismisses the popular Kremlin theory that the murder was an opposition provocation.
That concludes our live-blog for February 28. Our coverage will resume on March 1 with the planned funeral march.