NYU Professor and frequent Power Vertical guest Mark Galeotti offers his thoughts on the Nemtsov murder:
My working hypothesis is that Nemtsov was killed by some murderous mavericks, not government agents, nor opposition fanatics. But the reason they felt obliged to go and gun down a frankly past-his-peak anti-government figure is highly likely to be precisely because of the increasingly toxic political climate that clearly is a product of Kremlin agency, in which people like Nemtsov are portrayed as Russophobic minions of the West, enemies of Russia’s people, culture, values and interests.
Read the full piece here.
Low quality closed-circuit telvision footage published by the TV Tsentr Russian television station alleges to show the murder of Nemtsov from afar. It highlights two people walking across the bridge by St Basil's Cathedral toward Bolotnaya Square. They are passed (and eclipsed) by a snow-removal truck. At that point a man is seen emerging quickly from behind the truck and getting into a car which drives off, presumably after the shooting. The truck continues to drive, while a figure -- thought to be Nemtsov's girlfriend -- runs toward the truck which stops for a couple of minutes. Two men are seen inspecting the body, fleeing the scene and then returning to it later.
Russian journalist Oleg Kashin speculates that the latter two men could have been a surveillance detail following Nemtsov from afar.
Nemtsov, in 2012, said that his phone had been tapped on the orders of Putin, in an article on the bugging of the Russian opposition by journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan:
‘I’ve had the same number for a number of years and even though I’ve been aware of everything, I haven’t changed it because I don’t want to waste taxpayers’ money," he said. "On the instructions of Putin, the KGB people and [Vladislav] Surkov, they’ve been eavesdropping on my conversations and leaking everything on the Internet. In the past they leaked my conversations with Chubais and Lisovsky."
Read the full piece here.
"There are more and more flowers," writes opposition organizer Leonid Volkov on Twitter.
Ksenia Sobchak, an opposition-minded Russian journalist and the daughter of Putin’s erstwhile patron Anatoly Sobchak, writes in Snob.Ru: “In fact, in some ways it would be less alarming if Putin had ordered the murder of Nemtsov. It would be viewed as terrible, but nonetheless it would be the system. A controlled system. He ordered – they carried out."
She adds, "But it seems to me that alas this is not what happened. This isn’t a Putin that gave an order to murder, but a Putin who has created a hellish terminator and has lost control of it.”
Read the full piece here, in Russian.
Here is video from earlier today of members of the Russian opposition laying flowers for Nemtsov.
Over 200 people paid tribute to Nemtsov in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported. The local opposition is also planning a march in memory of the slain Russian politician for March 1.