Thousands honor slain Putin foe

Mostly silent march in Moscow pays tribute to Nemtsov

People carry a placard with the image of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov who was gunned down on Friday, during a march, in St.Petersburg, Russia, Sunday, March 1, 2015. Thousands converged Sunday in central Moscow to mourn veteran liberal politician Boris Nemtsov, whose killing on the streets of the capital has shaken Russia’s beleaguered opposition. They carried flowers, portraits and white signs that said “I am not afraid.”  (AP Photo/Elena Ignatyeva)
People carry a placard with the image of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov who was gunned down on Friday, during a march, in St.Petersburg, Russia, Sunday, March 1, 2015. Thousands converged Sunday in central Moscow to mourn veteran liberal politician Boris Nemtsov, whose killing on the streets of the capital has shaken Russia’s beleaguered opposition. They carried flowers, portraits and white signs that said “I am not afraid.” (AP Photo/Elena Ignatyeva)

MOSCOW -- For the tens of thousands bearing flowers and tying black ribbons to railings in honor of slain Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, the solemn march through the Moscow drizzle on Sunday was a time for silence, not slogans.

The marchers occasionally broke into chants of "Russia without Putin," or "Say no to war," but often the only sound was the steady thwack of police helicopters overhead or the hum of police boats patrolling the shores of the Moscow River.

While the killing of Nemtsov has shaken the Russian opposition, which sees the Kremlin as responsible, it is unclear whether his death will be enough to invigorate the beleaguered movement. Despite the Ukraine conflict and Russia's economic crisis, support for President Vladimir Putin has been above 80 percent in the past year.

Since mass anti-Putin protests brought hundreds of thousands to the streets of Moscow in 2011 and 2012, Putin has marginalized and intimidated his political opponents, jailing some, driving others into exile, and ramping up fines and potential jail time for those detained at protests.

Nemtsov, 55, was among the few prominent opposition figures who refused to be cowed. But while many at the march expressed respect for his long political career and grief at his loss, few believed that his death would spark major change in Russia because of the Kremlin's control over national television, where a vast majority of Russians get their news.

"Maybe if 100 people were to die people would rise up, but I don't really believe in that," said Sergei Musakov, 22. "People are so under the influence of the [TV] box that they will believe anything that television tells them. If it tells them that terrorists from the Islamic State group came to Russia in order to blow up the fifth column, they'll believe it."

The Kremlin had identified Nemtsov as among the leaders of a "fifth column," painting him and other opposition figures as traitors in the service of a hostile West.

About 30,000 people attended the march, making it the largest opposition rally in more than a year. Protesters also gathered in other cities, including St. Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod, where Nemtsov had served as governor.

The vigil took the place of a protest rally that Nemtsov had been organizing for Sunday called the March of Spring. It was intended to be a focus for public discontent over stagnant wages and inflation, as well as Russia's entanglement in Ukraine.

When city officials refused at first to grant a parade permit for the center of Moscow, Nemtsov prepared to hold the rally in the outlying Maryino district. But the Yabloko Party said it would boycott an event there. On Saturday, the city relented and granted the parade permit so that marchers could walk past the place where Nemtsov was killed.

"God help us come together now," said Yuri Medovar, a member of the Yabloko Party, who attended the march. "At least Boris' murder can unite us and let us realize that the real enemy is in the Kremlin."

Nemtsov was gunned down shortly before midnight Friday as he walked across a bridge near the Kremlin. The killing came just hours after a radio interview in which he denounced Putin's "mad, aggressive policy" in Ukraine.

Nemtsov had been getting death threats and was working on a report about Putin and Russia's involvement in Ukraine's conflict, Ilya Yashin, an opposition leader, said. In 2011, he published a report that focused on how Putin's friends and relatives benefited from the regime and on the perks he enjoyed as the head of an oil-rich state.

"We will do everything to ensure that the organizers and perpetrators of this vile and cynical murder get their deserved punishment," Putin said in a telegram to Nemtsov's mother, who attended the Sunday vigil.

No one has been arrested in the killing. Investigators said they were looking into several possible motives, including whether he was a sacrificial lamb to destabilize Russia or if Islamist extremists angry over his support for French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo killed him, and have offered nearly $50,000 for information about the shooting.

Authorities have searched Nemtsov's Moscow apartment and confiscated many of his files as well as his computer, his friends said. His office in Yaroslavl, 150 miles northeast of Moscow, was also being searched Sunday, according to local news stories.

TV Center, a station controlled by the Moscow city government, broadcast a poor-resolution video from one of its web cameras that it said shows Nemtsov and his date shortly before the killing.

The station, which superimposed its own time code on the footage, circled figures that it said were Nemtsov and the woman walking across the bridge. A snowplow that moved slowly behind the couple obscured the view of the shooting.

TV Center then circled what it said was the suspected killer jumping into a passing car. The authenticity of the video could not be independently confirmed.

Russia's Sputnik news agency reported Sunday that authorities are looking for a man of average height with short hair. Security cameras in the area of the killing reportedly picked up images of the shooter, said to have been wearing jeans and a brown sweater.

Investigators said Sunday they were again questioning the woman, Ukrainian citizen Anna Duritskaya. Russian media have identified her as a model.

Her lawyer said Sunday that the Russian authorities were not allowing Duritskaya to return home to Ukraine, although she was not formally being detained.

The lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov, told the RIA news agency that Duritskaya had rejected police protection but was nonetheless being kept in Moscow under guard.

Mikhail Kasyanov, a former prime minister who joined the opposition, told the crowd the killing should be a turning point for Russia "for the simple reason that people who before thought that they could quietly sit in their kitchens and simply discuss problems within the family, now will start reconsidering everything that's going on in our country."

"The fact that all this could happen in Russia in the 21st century near the Kremlin walls is shocking a lot of people," Kasyanov told Bloomberg News.

Ukrainian lawmaker Alexei Goncharenko, a member of President Petro Poroshenko's party, was detained at the rally and later released. Poroshenko said in a message on Facebook that he's spoken with Goncharenko, whom he said is at Ukraine's Embassy in Moscow.

The federal Investigative Committee said Goncharenko was being questioned Sunday about his alleged involvement in a fire that broke out last year in his home city Odessa between pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russia demonstrators. Dozens died in the fire.

The speaker of Ukraine's parliament, Volodymyr Groisman, said the detention was a violation of international law because Goncharenko has diplomatic immunity.

Goncharenko faced legal proceedings today, his lawyer said.

Since Nemtsov's death, investigators, politicians and political commentators on state television have suggested numerous motives for the attack.

The most popular theory seemed to be that Western secret services were behind the hit, with the aim of destabilizing Russia. Putin's spokesman said the president saw the attack as a "provocation" against the state.

Some bristled at Western coverage that suggested Nemtsov was killed for his relentless opposition to Putin.

"We haven't even recovered, the man hasn't even been buried, and the West is shoving down our throats that Russia supposedly has killed a key opposition politician," Dmitry Kiselyov, a television anchor famous for his anti-Western broadcasts, said on his Sunday evening show.

Kiselyov noted that while Nemtsov was known in Russia from his political activity in the 1990s, when he served as a deputy prime minister overseeing changes, he was no longer popular. The anchor suggested that the West may have believed his death would resonate more with average Russians than his political activity.

For those at the march, it's that rhetoric on state television that makes the prospects for change dim.

"From my experience, trying to convince people isn't possible," said Mikhail Trofimenko, 42, a screenwriter. "I think things will only get worse, but I hope that by some miracle Russia will not fall apart and remain a united country."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States had no intelligence on who was behind the shooting.

"The bottom line is we hope there will be a thorough, transparent, real investigation, not just of who actually fired the shots, but who, if anyone, may have ordered or instructed this or been behind this," Kerry said Sunday on ABC's This Week.

Also Sunday, the widow of murdered Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko said she thinks the Russian government may have been involved in the murder.

Marina Litvinenko told BBC Radio she thinks Nemtsov's slaying Friday night in Moscow seems to have been the Russian government's way of silencing critics of Putin, but offered no proof.

Litvinenko has blamed the Russian government for the poisoning of her husband, who died in London in 2006 after ingesting radioactive tea. An inquiry into her husband's death is ongoing.

Information for this article was contributed by Laura Mills, Lynn Berry, Irina Titova and staff members of The Associated Press; by Olga Tanas, Jason Corcoran and staff members of Bloomberg News; by Andrew E. Kramer, Sophia Kishkovsky and Alexandra Odynova of The New York Times; by Michael Birnbaum of The Washington Post and by Sergei L. Loiko and staff members of the Los Angeles Times.

A Section on 03/02/2015

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