Silencing dissent: Opposition leader’s death sparks outrage in Russia

Opposition activists and ordinary liberal-minded Russians were plunged into mourning Saturday, posting tributes to 55-year-old politician and Boris Nemtsov — an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin and Russia’s domestic and foreign policy — both on social networks and at the scene where he was murdered, just hours before he was scheduled to lead an opposition rally. Investigators said Nemtsov was shot by unidentified assailants from a white car as he was walking with a woman along a bridge just yards from the Kremlin. Activists scrapped Sunday’s planned opposition rally in Moscow and said they would hold a memorial march in the city centre instead.

[The murder] bears the hallmarks of a contract killing.

Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who described the murder as provocation

World leaders have condemned the murder. President Barack Obama called on the Russian government to conduct a prompt and impartial investigation of the killing; French President Francois Hollande called the killing a “hateful murder” of a “defender of democracy.” The last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev said the killing was aimed at “destabilizing the situation in the country, at heightening confrontation” with the West.

(Whether) Putin gave order to murder Boris Nemtsov is not the point. It is Putin’s dictatorship. His 24/7 propaganda about enemies of the state.

Garry Kasparov, former chess world champion and current Putin critic, in a tweet