MOSCOW - Yabloko party founder Grigory Yavlinsky says the killing of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov a year ago dashed the hopes for Russia's post-Soviet modernization.
“Boris Nemtsov’s murder a year ago marked the end of the evolution of government in a post-Soviet Russia and it would be safe to say it marked the end of the entire post-Soviet period of hopes in general,” Yavlinsky said at a party congress on Saturday.
Nemtsov’s murder symbolized the disruption of post-Soviet modernization “and the collapse of the dream and hope that we could plan a new Russia with this administration,” he said.
“A politician was killed a year ago exclusively because of what he said and what he thought. This murder has no relation to an investigation, or corruption, or money, or debts. Nemtsov was killed for purely political motives, as an opponent of the political course and its open and outspoken critic,” he said.
“The names of those who ordered and carried out the murder will become known sooner or later, but, in political terms, this murder dooms the anti-European political course and the entire policy in which all of us are living,” he said.
Following Yavlinsky’s speech, the congress delegates observed a moment of silence to commemorate Nemtsov.
Yavlinsky, Yabloko Party Chairperson Emilia Slabunova, Deputy Chairperson Alexander Gnezdilov, and political committee members Lev Shlosberg, Viktor Sheinis, and Sergei Mitrokhin later joined a march commemorating Nemtsov in Moscow.
Nemtsov was shot and killed on Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge in Moscow late on February 27, 2015.
