Moscow police on March 7 detained two suspects in the murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, Interfax news agency reports.
The suspects were identified as Anzor Kubashev and Zaur Davayev. President Vladimir Putin has been informed
about the detention, report says.
Alexandr
Bortnikov, head of Russia’s Security Service, said the investigation goes on.
Nemtsov, 55,
was murdered on the night of
Feb. 27 in Moscow near Red Square while walking home from a restaurant with his 23-year-old girlfriend Anna
Duritska from Ukraine.
Duritska has given
testimony about the murder, but Russia’s Investigative Committee said on
March 1 that it will hold “additional investigative proceedings”
involving Duritska. A native of Bila Tserkva but living in Kyiv,
Duritska was a model signed by the Kyiv-based agency Amodels.
Nemtsov was shot four
times.
Many believe Putin ordered the murder.
“Organizers should be looked for in Putin’s inner circle,” Ilya
Yashin, Nemtsov’s ally, told the Kyiv Post. “Given that Putin, who was
criticized by Nemtsov, benefited the most, investigators should make that
version the key one.”
Meanwhile, Putin’s
spokesperson Dmitriy Peskov said the Russian leader thinks the murder is a provocation meant to make Putin look guilty. The investigators consider Ukrainian special services, the Russian
opposition or Islamic radicals could stand behind the killing.
Nemtsov was a
leading political figure in Russia since the 1990s and a former deputy prime minister seen once as the heir apparent to the late Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Around 50,000 people attended the March 1
opposition event in Moscow devoted to Nemtsov’s murder.
Nemtsov used to be an
adviser to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and was a vehement
critic of Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Kyiv Post associate business editor Ivan Verstyuk can be reached at [email protected].
