Year after Nemtsov assassination, crime remains unsolved

Russians marched through Moscow on Saturday to honor the anniversary of political opposition leader Boris Nemtsov’s death.

Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister in the government of Boris Yeltsin, was gunned down on February 27, 2015, while walking across a bridge a short distance from the Kremlin and Saint Basil’s Cathedral with his Ukrainian model girlfriend.

The memorial march for assassinated Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov.

The somber quiet was occasionally broken by chants of “Russia without Putin!” and “Russia will be free!” – two of Mr. Nemtsov’s rallying cries when he was at the head of louder protests against the Kremlin’s authoritarianism.

MOSCOW (AP) – The ambassadors from European Union countries have paid their respects to slain Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov by visiting the makeshift memorial on the bridge where he was shot.

“It’s a chance for them to look around and say, ‘We are alive and not afraid, ‘” said Ekaterina Schulmann, a political scientist and a senior lecturer at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration.

Authorities allowed the demonstrators to walk through downtown Moscow but denied organizers permission to march across the bridge, to the site where Nemtsov was gunned down.

In an interview with the magazine Sobesednik past year prior to his death, Nemtsov said he feared Putin would have him killed because of his opposition to the war in Ukraine.

A file picture taken on March 1, 2015 shows Russia’s opposition supporters carrying a banner bearing a portrait of Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov during a march in central Moscow. “He was one of the most prominent, most courageous, most principled people”.

Russian police have arrested five Chechen men accused of killing Nemtsov for cash, but an investigation of who ordered the crime has stalled amid a slew of conspiracy theories.

Smaller commemorative events took place across Russian Federation.

Gallery: Profile: Who Was Boris Nemtsov?

The suspected triggerman was an officer in the security forces of Kremlin-backed Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

The Kremlin downplayed the cake-throwing attack, saying it should be in no way linked to Kadyrov.

In language reminiscent of the Stalinist purges, Kadyrov denounced the opposition as “traitors” and “enemies of the people”, even posting a video featuring former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov and fellow opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza in the crosshairs of a sniper rifle. “This includes those of our colleagues that are working in the area of military counterintelligence, meaning that they support operations conducted by our pilots in the course of the counter-terrorist operation in Syria, as well as the counter-terrorist units working inside the country [Russia]”, Putin said during a meeting with members of the FSB.