'I am not afraid': Thousands of Russians march in memory of Kremlin critic

Holding placards declaring “I am not afraid,” thousands of Russians marched in Moscow on Sunday in memory of Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, whose murder has widened a split in society that some say could threaten Russia’s future. The marchers, representing the young and old, walked slowly, with many carrying portraits of Nemtsov, an opposition politician and former deputy prime minister who was shot dead while walking home from a restaurant in central Moscow on Friday night. National investigators who answer to Putin say they are pursuing several lines of inquiry, including the possibility that Nemtsov, a Jew, was killed by radical Islamists or that the opposition killed him to blacken the president’s name.

If we can stop the campaign of hate that’s being directed at the opposition, then we have a chance to change Russia. If not then we face the prospect of mass civil conflict.

Gennady Gudkov, an opposition leader

Nemtsov’s murder has prompted deep soul searching in a country where for years after the Soviet Union collapsed many yearned for the stability later brought by President Vladimir Putin. Some now fear his rule has become an autocracy. Nemtsov, who was 55, was one of the leading lights of an opposition struggling to revive its fortunes, three years after mass rallies against Putin that failed to prevent him returning to the presidency after four years as prime minister.

It is a blow to Russia. If political views are punished this way, then this country simply has no future.

Sergei Mitrokhin, an opposition leader

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