Tens of thousands of people marched in central Moscow on Sunday to honor the memory of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was gunned down near the Kremlin in the highest-profile assassination during Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rule.
A sea of grim-faced supporters, holding Russian flags and Nemtsov portraits, marched in the drizzle from a packed Moscow square to the bridge over the Moskva River where the 55-year-old was shot in the back shortly before midnight on Friday.
In what appeared to be the largest opposition gathering since anti-Kremlin rallies in 2011-2012 brought more than 100,000 people into the streets, marchers honored Nemtsov’s memory while condemning Moscow’s stance on Ukraine.
Photo: Reuters
“These bullets are for each of us,” read a huge banner at the head of the march while others stated “I am Boris,” “I am not afraid” and “propaganda kills.”
“Stop the war” in Ukraine, others said.
Organizers put the crowd at 70,000, while police estimated it at 21,000.
About 6,000 people, some wrapped in Ukrainian flags, also turned out in Russia’s second-largest city, Saint Petersburg.
“I am carrying a Ukrainian flag because he fought for the end of the Ukraine war. And they killed him because of that,” marcher Vsevolod Nelayev said.
Hours before the killing, Nemtsov went on the radio to urge Russians to join him at a Sunday rally in Moscow to protest against the Ukraine war and Putin’s rule. After his murder the protest was turned into a memorial march, with authorities approving a turnout of 50,000.
Elsewhere in Eastern Europe, Nemtsov was also honored.
In both Warsaw and Prague, mourners lit candles by his portrait, and in Budapest people laid flowers outside the Russian diplomatic mission.
Some 400 people marched in Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, while dozens gathered on Kiev’s Independence Square, the focal point of Ukraine’s uprising a year ago.
Nemtsov, an anti-corruption crusader and vocal critic of the government, was a former deputy prime minister in the 1990s under then-Russian president Boris Yeltsin.
He died after being hit by four bullets to the back while crossing the bridge a stone’s throw from the Kremlin, in sight of the golden domes of Saint Basil’s Cathedral. A woman with him was not hurt.
Kremlin critics said the murder marked a watershed moment.
“We have entered a new epoch — the epoch of the physical liquidation of political opponents of the regime,” prominent commentator Yulia Latynina said.
Nemtsov’s assassination has dampened any hope for a peaceful political transition in Russia away from Putin’s government, Garry Kasparov, a prominent opposition voice, said in an interview with Reuters on Sunday.
The former world chess champion, who lives in self-imposed exile in the US, said that he saw no chance for Russia to move away from “Putin’s brutal dictatorship into something that will be even [as] mild as we had 10 years ago.”
Kasparov joined supporters of Nemtsov who suspect Russian authorities were behind the killing.
“It’s a signal to everybody that’s engaged in opposition activities that all bets are off,” Kasparov said. “We’re not going to waste time to prosecute you ... pretending that we are respecting the rule of law. We’ll simply eliminate you.”
Kasparov said he would not return to Moscow, even to attend today’s funeral service for Nemtsov.
“I don’t buy one-way tickets,” he said.
However, Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, sought to counter talk of the Kremlin toughening efforts to stifle critics.
“It would be too emotional and wrong to conclude that a string of such murders has begun,” he said.
Additional reporting by Reuters
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese