European diplomats honored the memory of Boris Nemtsov on the anniversary of his assassination.
European diplomats and Moscow residents marked the 11th anniversary of Boris Nemtsov's assassination by laying flowers on the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge. Security forces removed people holding flowers and demanded they disperse.
As "Caucasian Knot" reported, the murder of Boris Nemtsov could not have been the initiative of the perpetrators, and Chechen security forces were not involved in this crime at Ramzan Kadyrov's "own request," former Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alfred Kokh* is confident. He recalled that Vladimir Putin presented Kadyrov with an order shortly after the politician's murder. For 11 years, the investigation has not named the people who ordered the politician's murder; On the tenth anniversary of Boris Nemtsov's murder, it became known that Abdul Elmurzaev, a native of Chechnya who had been stalking him before the murder, was wanted.
Boris Nemtsov was shot dead in Moscow on February 27, 2015. On July 13, 2017, a Moscow court found Chechen natives Zaur Dadaev, Anzor Gubashev, Shadid Gubashev, Tamerlan Eskerkhanov, and Khamzat Bakhaev guilty of murder and sentenced them to terms ranging from 11 to 20 years. The case also involves Chechen officer Ruslan Mukhudinov, believed to be the mastermind behind the murder, Beslan Shavanov, who was killed during his arrest, and Ruslan Geremeyev, an officer with the Sever Battalion. The mastermind behind the murder has not been identified, according to the Caucasian Knot report "The Chechen Trace in Nemtsov's Murder".
EU Ambassador to Russia Roland Galarag and EU ambassadors visited the site of Boris Nemtsov's death today, laying flowers at the unofficial memorial on the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge.
"Peace, freedom, democracy—these were Nemtsov's values. He was not afraid to speak and act boldly, even though he knew he was risking his life," notes a post on the Telegram channel of the EU Delegation to Russia.
Police demanded dispersal
Among the participants in the flower-laying ceremony were employees of the diplomatic missions of Germany, Great Britain, France, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Spain, and the United States. "While the diplomats were laying bouquets, a police officer called on the crowd through a loudspeaker to disperse," the RusNews Telegram channel reported.
During the day, the bridge where Nemtsov was killed "was quite deserted," although in previous years, "people with flowers flocked to the site of his death," the ZPCh Telegram channel noted. "Representatives of law enforcement agencies in uniform and civilian clothes began filming those carrying flowers well in advance. Those who remained at the memorial to communicate were asked to disperse," the channel's report noted.
The impromptu "Nemtsov Bridge" memorial has been maintained by volunteers since the day of the politician's assassination. In the early years of its existence, city authorities "cleaned the memorial daily," but now security forces continue to photograph visitors to the memorial and the inscriptions on posters, Novaya Gazeta notes.
The anniversary of the assassination has given the EU a reason to recall targeted sanctions
Boris Nemtsov "left behind an important political legacy," and the human rights situation in Russia has only worsened since his assassination, the European External Action Service (EEAS) stated on the anniversary of the crime.
"The suppression and tightening of restrictions on civil society, independent media, the political opposition, and dissent continues, along with Russia's systemic failure to fulfill its international obligations to immediately and unconditionally release all political prisoners," reads a statement published on the EEAS website.
As evidence of its commitment to protecting human rights, the EU recalled that, since 2024, sanctions for human rights violations have been imposed against 62 individuals and one legal entity in Russia.
During his political career, Boris Nemtsov has repeatedly spoken out about the situation in Chechnya. In particular, he advocated for the withdrawal of Russian troops from the republic in 1996. Some of Nemtsov's statements about Chechnya are collected in a biography of the politician, posted on the "Caucasian Knot." In his autobiography, "Confessions of a Rebel," Nemtsov recounted that at his first meeting with Ramzan Kadyrov at the Congress of the Chechen People in 2002, the future head of Chechnya declared that Nemtsov should be killed for proposing "to eliminate the post of president and form a parliament, and then a government, implying some kind of compromise between various groups, including separatists." He claimed that the Chechens nearby began to say Ramzan was joking. "But I didn't see any joke in his eyes. I saw hatred in his eyes," Nemtsov wrote.
On December 11, 2020, at a closed meeting with human rights activists, Vladimir Putin stated that "in general, everything is clear, the perpetrators have been found, as well as those who ordered it." A year later, in December 2021, Putin promised that if those behind Nemtsov's murder, unknown to the investigation, were behind them, the search for them would continue.
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