Putin opposition Boris Nemtsov shot dead
Russian opposition politician and former deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov has been shot dead, officials have confirmed.
"In central Moscow, a man with documents in the name of Boris Yefimovich Nemtsov was killed," an interior ministry spokesman told AFP, declining to give further details.
According to a source in the law enforcement bodies who spoke to Russia's Interfax news agency, Mr Nemtsov was shot four times in the back with a pistol from a white car which fled the scene in central Moscow.
A spokesman for President Vladimir Putin said he would take “personal control” the investigation into Mr Nemtsov’s death under and that he believed the killing to be a “provocation”.
Nemtsov called out to the people of Moscow on radio to attend an opposition march against Putin’s government and the war in Ukraine this weekend just hours before his death, The Guardian reports.
An organiser of the march, Alexei Navalny, has been jailed for 15 days.
“Today before the programme he asked me if I wasn’t scared to have him on air,” Alexei Venediktov, the editor-in-chief of radio station Ekho Moskvy, tweeted.
“It wasn’t me who needed to be scared.”
Opposition politician Gennady Gudkov wrote on Twitter:
“We will answer Nemtsov’s murder with everyone coming out to the rally on 1 March, it’s the best thing we can do for now."
After serving under President Boris Yeltsin as deputy Prime Minister in the 1990s, he fell out of favour with current president Vladimir Putin.
News break – February 28
