World

Nemtsov murder: the beginning of a dark era for Russia

The Kremlin is cornered, defensive and increasingly aggressive

March 04, 2015
A mourner pays their respects to murdered Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov by laying flowers on the bridge over the Moscow river. © ZINA HUDIAKOVA/NEWZULU/PA Images
A mourner pays their respects to murdered Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov by laying flowers on the bridge over the Moscow river. © ZINA HUDIAKOVA/NEWZULU/PA Images

On a cold evening on 27 February, Russia’s former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov was walking across a bridge in central Moscow close to the Kremlin when he was gunned down and killed. The 55 year old Nemtsov, long a harsh critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was with his 23 year old Ukrainian girlfriend at the time of his death. Mysteriously, some of the surrounding CCTV cameras were later said by police to have been turned off. His body was taken away and the crime scene hosed down within minutes, though it took the police a while to arrive. The murder or, more correctly, the assassination could have come straight from the pages of a John Le Carre novel.

The media wars swiftly began. Western journalists from Europe to the U.S. have lined up to accuse the Kremlin of being behind the hit, while Russian newspapers and TV channels have blamed everyone from ultranationalists to Jihadists to, bewilderingly, Ukrainian-hired Chechens for taking out Nemtsov.

But as the journalist Ben Judah recently noted, as a leading dissident Nemtsov would likely have been under round-the-clock surveillance from Russian security service the FSB. Nothing he did or said would have escaped their notice; and certainly no one could have killed him without either the Kremlin's blessing or its deliberate omission.

Amid the furore one thing is clear: the assassination marked what is likely to be the beginning of a dark era for Russia.

Political assassinations are nothing new. Only a few years ago Alexander Litvinenko, another critic of Putin, was poisoned in a London restaurant. The journalist Anna Politkovskaya, an outspoken critic of Putin, was murdered in 2006 as she entered the lift in her block of flats.

But the brazen nature of the act (and its occurrence just by the seat of Russian power) sends a clear message: if you are part of the opposition you can and will be killed.

Whether or not Putin ordered the assassination, he has created a toxic political climate in which anyone criticising the regime's actions is deemed a traitor. Since the war in Ukraine began last year the Kremlin has pumped out nationalist propaganda accusing Ukrainian Nazis of overthrowing an elected President, killing their own people in the eastern region of Donbas and claiming international sanctions are part of western plots to bring about "regime change" in Russia.

On Vkontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook, this extreme nationalist rhetoric is echoed across hundreds if not thousands of profile and group pages, which rail at everyone from gays to liberal Russians to Ukrainian fascists. Nemtsov’s killing is merely the logical conclusion of a long-running stream of government propaganda throughout state media and Russia’s military actions in Ukraine over the last year.

Putin took power in 2000 just as international oil prices began to boom. It was a wave he was able to ride for almost 14 years. Now prices are plummeting, the ruble has dropped accordingly and the Russian economy, so long a guarantor of social stability, is tottering. The need for terror to keep people in line has never been greater.

On Monday, tens of thousands gathered in Moscow to march in honour of Nemtsov. Russians carried banners declaring “we are not afraid” and chanted anti-Putin slogans. Russian and Ukrainian flags fluttered in breeze while mourners placed mounds of flowers at the site of his death. Hundreds of police looked on intently. Prior to his death, Nemtsov said that Putin had invaded Ukraine because he was scared of its EuroMaidan Revolution. His death proves that the Russian authorities are still scared. And it is a fear that is likely to lead to more violence and more death and more repression.

Nemtsov's killing marks the moment that Russia officially abandoned all pretence of being a democratic state. Previously, the Kremlin would allow, and even encourage opposition figures, to create at least an illusion of democracy. Now even that appears to have changed. The reports that Nemtsov wrote on the alleged corruption surrounding the Sochi Winter Olympic Games and his publicly articulated views on Putin's policies toward Ukraine are no longer permissible in the new Russia. And the Kremlin no longer even cares about disguising this fact.

All of this bodes ill for Ukraine. The Kremlin is cornered, defensive and increasingly aggressive. The likelihood that it will continue to lash out is greater than ever before. As the Russian economy continues to contract, as it currency continues to fall and its unemployment grows, it will need more and more distractions for its beleaguered populace. This means more nationalism and more racism and, almost certainly, more war.