Russian security forces detained two suspects in connection with the Moscow slaying of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov after Russian President Vladimir Putin accented the importance of investigating what he called a “brazen” crime.
Two men from the Caucasus region were seized as suspects, Russian Federal Security Service Director Alexander Bortnikov said yesterday in a broadcast on state broadcaster Rossiya 24.
Putin has been informed, he added.
Nemtsov, 55, a Russian politician and critic of Putin’s regime, was shot dead on a bridge near the Kremlin late on Feb. 27, raising concerns over civil freedoms in the nation.
The apparent murder prompted more than 50,000 people to hold a vigil in Moscow on Sunday last week, while top officials and business leaders attended his funeral last week.
Putin told Russian law enforcement on Wednesday last week to guard against extremist threats to the state aimed at provoking conflict similar to the crisis in Ukraine.
Russia must rid itself of the “shame and tragedy” of killings “right in the center of the capital,” he said.
The detainees were identified as Anzor Gubashev and Zaur Dadaev, and are suspected of planning and carrying out the killing, Russia’s Investigative Committee said on its Web site.
The service and the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs continue to search for other people linked to the murder, it said.
“It is difficult to judge whether these are the real executors of the killing, or if investigators have been put on the wrong scent,” Nemtsov ally Ilya Yashin said in a statement on Facebook following the arrests.
Yashin added that high-ranking officials who criticized Nemtsov in recent years should be probed.
The probe into Nemtsov’s slaying might lead abroad, Interfax reported on Saturday, citing an unidentified Russian official familiar with the situation.
Putin’s nationalist allies said last week that the US might have been behind the death.
Russia’s liberal opposition has been struggling to gain traction against the backdrop of nationalistic fervor whipped up by the conflict in Ukraine and high public approval of Putin.
Of the movement’s leaders, Alexey Navalny has recently served a 15-day jail term for handing out pamphlets and Mikhail Khodorkovsky is in self-exile after a decade in prison.
Putin, 62, has cracked down on political foes since he was first elected in 2000, stamping out opposing voices in parliament and tightening the state’s control over media.
He increased regulation of the Internet and non-governmental organizations after protests three years ago.
Nemtsov’s allies blame the government for creating a climate that led to the killing.
“Bortnikov said security forces have evidence of their guilt, including camera recordings from the site,” Yashin said. “We will be striving for this evidence to be made public.”
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of