You're reading: Putin’s spokesman: Murder of Nemtsov is 100% provocation

Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov is certain that the murder of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov committed in downtown Moscow in the early hours of Feb. 28 is a provocation.

“Now it is too early to make any conclusion on the death of Boris Nemtsov, but one can be 100% sure that this is a provocation,” Peskov said in an interview with the RT.

Nemtsov was a vehement critic of Putin and vocal opponent against the Russian military invasions to Crimea and eastern Donbas.

“It is a provocation in the sense that it is absolutely clearly known that Boris Nemtsov is in opposition to the Russian authorities, that he is in opposition to the line that the Russian leadership pursues,” Peskov said in an interview with the Kommersant FM radio station.

Nemtsov had “rather tights contacts with various people in Kyiv. He went there often. This is not a secret. Everybody knows that,” Peskov said.

“And on the backdrop of let me say so events that opposition plans in the next few days, on the backdrop of such an emotional and tense atmosphere that we have given events in Ukraine, this can surely be a provocation,” the spokesman said.

Peskov claimed that Nemtsov did not pose a threat to the Russian leadership.

“With all respect to Boris Nemtsov he did not pose any threat in the political sphere, what is meant of course is political, for incumbent Russian authorities and for Vladimir Putin. If we compare the level of popularity and ratings of Putin and the government on the whole, then on general Boris Nemtsov was quite an average citizen,” Peskov said.

Speaking to the RT Peskov also noted that investigators are examining the role of a person who accompanied Nemtsov. “We know that he was with a girl. We will wait for results of investigation of official bodies to clarify the role of this girl,” Peskov said.