Boris Nemtsov

Shot on 27 February 2015 on a bridge beside the Kremlin by a gunman from a passing car; the opposition leader was killed days before leading an anti-war march.

Overview

Nemtsov, the reform governor of Nizhny Novgorod and first deputy prime minister of the 1990s who became the most credibly national figure of the Russian opposition, was walking home near Red Square with his companion when a snowplow shielded shooter fired six shots. The murder two days before his planned rally against the Ukraine war, on a wall of the Kremlin itself, produced an emblematic photograph. Five Chechen men, including the shooter, were convicted in 2017; whoever ordered the killing was never identified in court. The Boris Nemtsov Forum and the bridge renamed by activists keep his memory; the murder stands as the hinge on which the decade hopes turned. Flowers are laid on the bridge daily.