wsj.com: MOSCOW—Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was gunned down on a bridge next to the Kremlin late on Friday, in what authorities said appeared to be a contract killing.
“The president said this brutal killing bears all the hallmarks of a contract murder and is of an exclusively provocative character,” Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for PresidentVladimir Putin , told Russian news agencies. He noted the president asked to monitor the investigation personally.
Mr. Peskov said Mr. Putin offered his deepest condolences to Mr. Nemtsov’s family.
Police said they had deployed extra officers and issued a special citywide alert for capture the killers, who are at large. They said the assailants fired seven or eight shots from a passing car, four which hit and killed Mr. Nemtsov.
The killing comes as Mr. Nemtsov and other opposition leaders were planning a protest march against government policies in Moscow on Sunday.
It was the highest-profile killing of political figure in decades, more typical of the violent years just after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 than of more-recent periods.
“He got lots of threats, mostly via social networks, anonymously,” said Ilya Yashin, a longtime opposition ally of Mr. Nemtsov. “I have no doubt this was a political killing. The only threat to his life came from his political activity. He had no foes other than political ones.”
Mr. Yashin said Mr. Nemtsov had been working on a report to be called “Putin. War,” alleging that Russian troops had been fighting alongside pro-Russia separatists in Ukraine—something the Kremlin has denied.
Mr. Nemtsov, 55 years old, was one of the most prominent of a generation of young pro-democracy reformers who came to power after the collapse of communism.
A Kremlin insider in the 1990s, he served as deputy prime minister and was once considered a potential successor to then-President Boris Yeltsin, but fell out of favor under the leadership of Mr. Putin.
In recent years, he had been the target of pro-Kremlin activists and was at times arrested for participating in antigovernment protests. He was among the leaders of the anti-Putin demonstrations in 2011-2012.
After his criticism of the Kremlin’s policies in Ukraine last year, Mr. Nemtsov had been branded by pro-government activists as a traitor and a Western agent.
From the provincial city of Nizhny Novgorod and known for a populist touch, after being appointed deputy prime minister, he ordered bureaucrats to give up their Mercedes sedans in favor of locally produced Volgas at one point. Then-President Boris Yeltsin later said he’d considered Mr. Nemtsov as a potential successor at one point.
After Mr. Putin came to power in 1999, Mr. Nemtsov and the other 1990s-era liberals were gradually pushed out of power, losing seats in parliament and being driven into open opposition.
Mr. Nemtsov grew increasingly critical of Mr. Putin’s crackdown on private business, political opponents and media freedoms, and found himself steadily pushed to the margins of the political system.
Once a member of the national parliament, he was most recently elected to the city council in the provincial city of Yaroslavl, but pro-Kremlin legislators there were pushing to have him ousted.
A native of Sochi, he had been especially critical of what he called corruption and waste in the $50 billion project to host the Winter Olympics there last year.
Mr. Nemtsov was one of the few prominent politicians in Russia to criticize the Kremlin’s policy in Ukraine and the annexation last year of Crimea from that country.
In comments that now seem a chilling foreshadow, Mr. Nemtsov early in February told the Sobesednik weekly that his mother often expressed fear that he would be killed for his opposition activities.
“‘When will you stop cursing Putin? He’ll kill you for that.’ She was completely serious,” he said. Asked if he shared that concern, he said, “I’m not scared that much (as my mother)…If I were really scared, I doubt I’d lead an opposition party; I doubt I’d be doing what I do.”
