CREDIT: REUTERS/MAXIM ZMEYEV
Tens of thousands of Russians marched through central Moscow on Sunday (March 1), carrying banners declaring “I am not afraid” and chanting “Russia without Putin” in memory of murdered Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov.
Families, the old and young walked slowly, with many holding portraits of the opposition politician and former deputy prime minister who was shot dead while walking home from a nearby restaurant on Friday (February 27) night.
The authorities have suggested the opposition itself may have been behind his shooting in an attempt to create a martyr and unite the fractured movement.
His supporters have blamed the authorities.
His murder has divided opinion in a country where for years after the Soviet Union collapsed many yearned for the stability later brought by former KGB agent Vladimir Putin.
A small but active opposition now says Putin’s rule has become an autocracy that flaunts international norms after Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimea peninsulalast year, fanned nationalism over the separatist war in eastern Ukraine and clamped down on dissent.
Muscovite, Igor, joined the rally in the heart of the capital, carrying a poster that read “I am Boris.”
“He was a good man, he was telling the truth. And he was killed for the truth. He was killed simply for telling the truth. And it was the Kremlin authorities who did it. And we came to express our dismay,” he said.
Valery, who carried a placard reading ‘No to the state propaganda war’, said he was against the leadership of President Vladimir Putin and conflict in Ukraine.
“I’m protesting against the war, against the fratricidal war and against Putin’s regime which is dangerous to the country.”
Lyubov, an elderly Moscow resident said she believed many Russians did not wish to hold the state accountable.
“The people who don’t want freedom, who are afraid of it, who believe everything they are fed by the mass propaganda without ever analysing what and where and how – this is the biggest problem, I think,” she said.
Police said 21,000 people attended the march. The organisers put the numbers at tens of thousands, but attendance appeared smaller than the 50,000 people the opposition had hoped for.
Reuters reporters at the march estimated the numbers in the tens of thousands.
People walked in the rain within view of the Kremlin’s red walls and past the spot, now covered in flowers, where Nemtsov was shot dead.
Nemtsov’s funeral is due to be held on Tuesday (March 3) in Moscow.
Reuters wires