You're reading: Murder Near Kremlin Wounds Ukrainians

Though post-Soviet Russia has a long tradition of political assassinations, opposition leader Boris Nemtsov's cold-blooded murder on Feb. 27 represents an entirely different rank.

Never has such a high-profile politician been killed in such a high-profile location in such an intimidating and repressive political atmosphere. Some argue that the murder is a watershed in Russia’s history.
A new, much darker, era has begun in the 15-year reign of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The murder of Nemtsov, 55, who used to be an adviser to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko and who was a vehement critic of Russia’s war against Ukraine, will have implications for both domestic and foreign policy. While a totalitarian ideology is gaining momentum and all dissent is rooted out in Russia, fears are rising that the Kremlin’s foreign policy may become even more hostile towards the West and that Russia’s war against Ukraine may intensify.
The Kremlin was quick to dismiss accusations that Putin or other Russian authorities ordered the assassination. They responded, however, with their usual outlandish conspiracy theories blaming the assassination on the Russian opposition, the West and Ukraine. Officials argued that the murder was not beneficial for Putin’s reputation and argued that Nemtsov was a marginal figure who posed no threat to the regime.
However, the Kremlin does have a lot to gain from Nemtsov’s murder, Kremlin critics pointed out.
Despite his relatively low popularity following endless Kremlin smear campaigns, Nemtsov was one of the most important opposition leaders and one of the most virulent critics of the Kremlin’s corruption and authoritarianism. The assassination took place ahead of Nemtsov’s planned report on the use of Russian regular troops in Ukraine and a major opposition march on March 1.
Ironically, the killing coincided with the newly-established Day of Special Operations, which effectively marks a year after Russian special forces invaded Crimea in the run-up to the March 2014 Russian annexation of Ukrane’s peninsula.
Some argue that pro-Putin thugs indoctrinated by the Kremlin’s anti-Western propaganda could have ordered the murder without the Kremlin’s consent. Fingers have been pointed at the Anti-Maidan (anti-revolutionary) group, created as a reaction to Ukraine’s EuroMaidan Revolution along with Russian-backed insurgents fighting in eastern Ukraine and pro-Kremlin Chechens sent to counter Kremlin critics.
Others, however, point out that the assassination of such an important opposition figure just a stone’s throw away from Red Square, in a place tightly monitored by the police and intelligence agencies, could not have been carried out without the Kremlin’s blessing. The sophisticated and professional character of the murder and the Kremlin’s habit of wiretapping all opposition leaders also lend credence to this theory.
“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.” However, Russian investigators are not even considering this possibility, saying that they are pursuing leads about whether Ukrainian special services, the Russian opposition or Islamic radicals could be behind the murder.
Fears are also high that that the murder represents a “point of no return” for Russia.
Previous watersheds were crossed when anti-Kremlin tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his associates were jailed in 2003, when Russia launched an invasion of Georgia in 2008, when Putin cracked down on the opposition and free media after being elected to a third term in 2012, and when he responded to the pro-Western EuroMaidan Revolution by annexing Crimea and invading Ukraine in 2014.
“We entered a new era – one of the physical liquidation of the regime’s political opponents,” writer and columnist Yulia Latynina said on Feb. 28. “Nemtsov, a major opposition leader, was killed before a protest march. The message is clear: anyone who attends an opposition march can be killed.” Tens of thousands showed up for the rally/wake on March 1, though.
Gleb Pavlovsky, a political consultant who used to work for the Kremlin but has switched sides since then, said that this was a new type of political murder.
“Whoever the killers are, it’s a completely new type of terrorism because the victim is not only a popular opposition leader but also a former representative of the ruling elite,” he told the Kyiv Post, referring to the fact that Nemtsov was a deputy prime minister in 1997-1998 and was even tapped to be former President Boris Yeltsin’s successor. “This was done in a brazen, in-your-face manner near the Kremlin, which was part of the plan. It was intended to show that everyone should be afraid.”
Some have likened Nemtsov’s murder to Communist functionary Sergei Kirov’s assassination in 1934, though Russia is still much less totalitarian than the Soviet Union at that time.
Josef Stalin blamed the murder on the opposition and used it as a pretext to launch large-scale political repressions, while his critics accused Stalin of killing Kirov.
The murder comes amid a large-scale Kremlin propaganda campaign aimed at demonizing and dehumanizing Putin’s political opponents and the ascendancy of a toxic anti-Western and totalitarian ideology.
This propaganda war has been lately focused on fueling hatred towards Ukraine, and some commentators have even interpreted Nemtsov’s murder as a spillover from the war in Donbas, calling him “the first victim of Russia’s civil war.”
It also follows the creation in January of the pro-Putin Anti-Maidan movement, a militant group that has been compared to Adolf Hitler’s SA and SS storm troopers and that has repeatedly called for eradicating the “fifth column,” or Putin’s critics.
“(The murder) formed a new political reality and became a symbol of relations between the government and opposition,” Yashin said. “The body of a shot opposition leader with Kremlin walls in the background is a symbol of the political atmosphere that has emerged in our country – one of hatred, intolerance and aggression against people who disagree with Putin’s policy.”
The new reality also could lead to further isolation from the West and may herald an intensification of the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine.
“(Journalist Anna) Politkovskaya’s murder (in 2006) happened when there was dialogue between Russia and the West, and when there was no war,” Alexei Makarkin, a deputy head of Russia’s Center for Political Technologies, said by phone. “Now this is happening when relations with the West are at a historic low.”
He also said that “those who benefit from this murder are those who want to completely isolate Russia from the West.” These are people who say the Kremlin is behaving indecisively in Ukraine and should be more aggressive in its policy, he added.
Oksana Grytsenko contributed to this report.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].