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Boris Nemtsov

When I first met Boris Nemtsov -he was then in his mid thirties- in addition to his obvious intelligence, he also possessed a glamour, which was not just a function of good looks, but also the determined way he had become anti-Soviet. He had begun by leading protests in his home town of Sochi and had steadily progressed so that by the last years of Boris Yeltsin, he had become mayor of Nizhni Novgorod and was in the process of being brought into the Kremlin. As such he might have become part of the corrupt cabal that ultimately- and disastrously- led to the emergence of the Putin regime. Instead, he chose a path that was both more principled and as his tragic assassination today has proven, more dangerous.

Nemtsov spoke for the Western Russia, as opposed to the Scythian one of Stalin and Putin. He believed in rule of law and rule of the people and he held in contempt those who have subverted and stolen Russia for their own personal greed. Nemtsov was not merely a political critic of Vladmir Putin's regime, he was a moral rebuke to it.

His murder today is a tragedy for Russia. 

As always, the "mouth of Sauron", Vladimir Putin's dishonest and highly unsavory press spokesman, Dimitri Peshkov was quick to try to find some angle that might mitigate the damage to his boss, declaring that the murder was a "provocation" and that Putin himself would take charge of the investigation. I suppose that it is a bit like having a fox investigate a murder in the hen house, because the ease with which the assassins were able to escape in a place swarming with police is already pretty suggestive. Even if Putin himself is not individually involved, someone with significant pull in the security services of Russia very likely is.

Tomorrow, March 1st, Boris Nemtsov was scheduled to address a demonstration against the Russian war in Ukraine. he had been blistering in his condemnation of "Putin's war" in the Donbas. His assassination on the eve of the demonstration is significant timing.

Shooting the only major Russian opposition leader still at liberty in the back is clearly intended to underline the danger that liberal, western minded people now face in the dark and paranoid political ghost train of Vladimir Putin's Russia. Yet in a sense Peshkov is right- the murder of Nemtsov is a political message: that the regime is fearful and increasingly divided.

I fear that this cowardly, barbaric act is just another note in the symphonie fantastique of the economic, social and political crack-up of Russia. The damage of Putin's rule is now eroding every part of the state and the nation. The nihilism of the Mafia state may not stop with the opposition, but eventually, and sometime soon, the regime will start to feast on its own children.

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