Muscovites mark year since opposition leader’s murder

Some marchers carried Russian flags, placards, flowers and Nemtsov’s portraits.

Authorities allowed the opposition to hold a march through the city centre but forbade activists from marching to the bridge where Nemtsov’s allies have struggled to maintain a makeshift shrine.

U.S. ambassador John Tefft was among those who came to pay respects, laying a wreath with a ribbon saying “From the American people”.

A line of flowers can be seen on the bridge near the Kremlin, where one year ago, opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was assassinated.

The commander is likely to say that he has never had any interest in Nemtsov and had no reason to dislike him, an anonymous source familiar with the situation said, Rosbalt reported. He said Kislitsin suffered a heart attack and a broken rib and has been hospitalized.

Kasyanov, left, and Nemtsov in 2014. “Only the perpetrators were found, not the paymasters and the organizers of this defiant crime”. The brutality so close to the center of Russian power both frightened and angered supporters of the beleaguered opposition.

Opposition leader Ilya Yashin said that Nemtsov’s killing was a terrorist act aimed at threatening those who disagree with Putin’s politics. “He was a worthy political opponent for Putin but he had insulted him”. “And it is very important for us to demonstrate terrorists, murderers, those villains that they will not succeed in trying to intimidate us”.

On the eve of the anniversary, lawmaker Dmitry Gudkov, one of the few independent voices in parliament, suggested that deputies observe a moment of silence in Nemtsov’s memory but most of his colleagues refused.

Investigators have charged a group of Chechen men with his murder, but Nemtsov’s supporters say the suspects are just low-level operatives who were paid to kill the prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin. Nemtsov was killed February 27, 2015, and some members of the opposition believe it was on the orders of pro-Putin Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

The official probe has failed to identify those who ordered the killing, and Russian liberal opposition activists have criticised the Kremlin for the failure to track down the mastermind.

“The march in Nemtsov’s memory is also a march demanding a normal country and normal state where contract killings in the form similar to public executions do not take place”, wrote top opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Kadyrov, whose term expires in April, has rejected the accusations.