Boris Nemtsov, the Russian opposition leader and Vladimir Putin critic, was shot dead in Moscow. He died just hours after appealing for a Moscow march against the war in Ukraine. On February 10, while speaking to Russia’s Sobesednik news website, Nemtsov said: “I’m afraid Putin will kill me.” Putin has condemned the murder, the Kremlin says. Nemtsov was 55.
Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion and Russian pro-democracy activist, wrote this in response to Nemtsov’s tragic death: “Devastated to hear of the cold-blooded murder of my long-time opposition colleague Boris Nemtsov in central Moscow, quite close to the Kremlin. Shot four times, once for each child he leaves behind. A man of Boris’s quality no longer fit Putin’s Russia. He always believed Russia could change from the inside and without violence; after 2012 I disagreed with this. When we argued, Boris would tell me I was too hasty, and that in Russia you had to live a long time to see change. Now he’ll never see it. Rest In Peace.”
