Eight years ago, Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov was shot dead while he was driving. His family is certain that no one ever looked for the masterminds. On the anniversary of his death, many Muscovites lay flowers near the Kremlin, despite the threat of arrest.
Despite the risk of arrests, numerous people in the Russian capital Moscow commemorated the opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was murdered eight years ago. On the bridge in the immediate vicinity of the Kremlin, on which Nemtsov was shot on February 27, 2015, people laid flowers this Monday until late into the evening. A reporter reported.
Several police officers patrolled the memorial. During the day, a young woman was arrested who was carrying a placard that read "Boris". Nemtsov was considered, among other things, a big supporter of Ukraine, which is striving towards the west, against which Russia has been openly waging war for a year.
At the age of 55, he was shot dead from a car just before midnight. In 2017, a court sentenced a former officer from Chechnya with close ties to Chechnya leader Ramzan Kadyrov and four accomplices to long prison terms. But the murder of the opposition politician, who was Deputy Prime Minister of Russia from 1997 to 1998 under President Boris Yeltsin, still raises many questions today. The motive of the alleged main perpetrator named Saur Dadayev and his accomplices is still unclear. The Nemtsow family complains that the masterminds were never really searched for.
"The memory of him lives on," wrote Russian Kremlin opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who lives abroad, on Twitter. "His example inspires thousands of Russians to stop being afraid and to make their homeland free."
Opposition actions of any kind have become very rare in Russia since the beginning of the war against Ukraine. People who want to lay flowers are repeatedly arrested at improvised memorials for the Ukrainian victims.
