Here's an update from our news desk on events surrounding the funeral
The funeral for Boris Nemtsov is set to take place in Moscow.
The Russian opposition leader was gunned down on a bridge near the Kremlin late on February 27.
Several European politicians said Russia had refused them entry to attend the funeral, including the speaker of Poland's Senate, Bogdan Borusewicz.
"I wanted to pay respect to the slain Boris Nemtsov and to all Russians who think like him," said Borusewicz, a key Solidarity dissident.
Latvian lawmaker Sandra Kalniete told AFP she was turned back at Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport.
"I feel really proud to be labelled an enemy of Russia today. Russia in its current state does not have many friends," Kalniete said, adding that she had met Nemtsov on his visits to the European Parliament.
Among the most senior foreign officials scheduled to attend the funeral is Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who called the killing a "provocation" to destabilize the country, will not attend.
Instead, he is sending his representative in parliament, Garry Minkh.
Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny's request to be released from prison to attend Nemtsov's funeral at Moscow's Troyekurovskoye cemetery was rejected by a Moscow court.
The Troyekurovskoye cemetery is also the resting place of another murdered Kremlin critic, Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya.
Before the funeral, a memorial service will take place at the Sakharov Center, a civil-rights center based in Moscow.
The woman who was with Nemtsov at the time he was killed said she had been questioned extensively by authorities.
Anna Durytska said she did not see the gunman who pulled the trigger.
The 23-year-old model was allowed to leave Russia and fly to her native Ukraine late on March 2.
"Ukrainian diplomats in Moscow provided all the necessary assistance for her return home," Yevhen Perebyinis, a Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman, wrote on his Twitter feed.
On March 2, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Nemtsov's killing should not be used for "political purposes."
He told the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva that Putin had "immediately handed down all instructions and is ensuring special control over this investigation."
Investigators said they are looking into several possible links for Nemtsov's slaying, including an attempt to destabilize the state, Islamic extremism, the Ukraine conflict, and his personal life.
Many opponents of Putin hold the Russian leader responsible for creating an atmosphere that encouraged the crime by fanning nationalist, anti-Western sentiments and vilifying the opposition.
Tens of thousands of supporters marched through central Moscow on March 1 in a silent tribute to Nemtsov.
Hours before he was killed, Nemtsov gave a radio interview in which he slammed Putin's "mad, aggressive policy" on Ukraine.
Echoed by other Western officials, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has called for Russia to conduct a prompt, thorough, transparent, and credible investigation into the slaying.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest on March 2 described Nemtsov as a "tireless advocate for his country, an opponent of corruption, and an advocate for human rights and greater transparency."
The business newspaper Kommersant on March 2 quoted anonymous sources in the Interior Ministry as saying there was no closed-circuit TV video of the killing because the cameras in question were not working at the time.
However, Yelena Novikova, a spokeswoman for Moscow's information-technology department, which oversees the city's surveillance cameras, said cameras "belonging to the city" were operating properly when Nemtsov was killed.
She told the AP news agency that federal authorities also had surveillance cameras near the Kremlin that are not under her organization's control.
Novikova would not confirm the existence of any video of the killing, saying the police investigation was still under way.
Closing out the liveblog with two more important reads:
Daisy Sindelar examines why some are finding parallels between Nemtsov's murder and the murder of Sergei Kirov, 80 years ago:
Stalin was never officially tied to the crime. But he used the murder as a pretext to unleash the Great Terror, eliminating thousands of political opponents by blaming them, directly or tangentially, for Kirov's death.
Aleksandr Orlov, a member of the Soviet secret police who claimed responsibility for organizing Kirov's death, wrote, "Stalin decided to arrange for the assassination of Kirov and to lay the crime at the door of the former leaders of the opposition and thus with one blow do away with Lenin's former comrades."
Sindelar also examines the range of bizarre conspiracy theories being offered in Russia for who killed Nemtsov
They've Done It Again: Murders Cast Pall Over Post-Soviet Russia
Read this powerful commentary by our own Steve Gutterman on what people mean in Russia when they say, "they killed..."
But it's clear who "they" are: The bad guys. The people who do what Putin often accuses the West, and particularly the United States, of trying its hardest to do: hold Russia back. Contain it. Prevent it from developing into what dozens of the Russians I met before and after the Soviet collapse of 1991 desperately wanted it to become: a normal country.
In different ways, Listyev, Politkovskaya, and Nemtsov each played a part in efforts to achieve that goal. Nemtsov's killing showed it may be more distant than ever.
...
But one thing the three killings have had in common was a stunned sense, among many people living and working in Russia, that it was the last straw -- that things could not get any worse.
And each murder has shown that they can.
Honcharenko in Moscow today before his detention, wearing a shirt that says "Heroes never die."
Volodymyr Groysman, the Ukrainian parliamentary chair, says the deputy's detention is a "violation of all international norms."
Strong words from Dmytro Kuleba, of Ukraine's Foreign Ministry, on the detention of Honcharenko:
"They [Russian authorities] clearly are better at catching Ukrainians than the murderers of Russians."
Likely the iconic photo of the day.
Some amazing photos from today's demonstration by Evgeny Feldman.
"I've never seen so many Russian flags at a demonstration," writes photographer Ilya Varlamov. Perhaps a direct rebuttal to the Kremlin's talk of a "fifth column" within the Russian opposition.