Boris Nemtsov, one of the most senior leaders of Russia’s political opposition, was shot dead in central Moscow early on Saturday in what his associates said was a political murder and President Vladimir Putin decried as a ‘provocation’.
The fatal attack on Mr Nemtsov, 55, came less than two days before a planned opposition protest against Mr Putin and drew international condemnation.
The veteran opposition leader, a former deputy prime minister under Mr Putin’s predecessor Boris Yeltsin, was killed with four shots from a pistol from a passing car as he was walking on a bridge over the Moskva River directly south of the Kremlin, an interior ministry spokeswoman said.