When I woke up on Feb. 28, I was sad to discover that despite relatively little fighting at the front around here, there had been another tragic death among those opposing Putin’s attempts to change Europe’s borders by aggression – courageous pro-democracy Russian politician Boris Nemtsov had been shot to death.
I met Nemtsov twice, when I reported from Russia in the 1990s and have followed his struggle for democracy in Russia. The first time I met him was when I was invited to dinner at a popular Moscow grill restaurant in 1998, by mutual friends of Nemtsov and his wife.
He was already unpopular with Russia’s former KGB security services, soon to be headed by Putin, and making enemies among the nexus corrupt politicians and criminal oligarch businessmen ripping Russia off for billions of dollars.
Nemtsov, a handsome man who was serious about keeping fit, spoke excellent English and in contrast to most Russians, who would begin and continue meals with large quantities of vodka, he sipped white wine. Unlike most powerful Russians, he did not want to be the sole topic of conversation. He wanted everyone’s view about Russia’s turbulent politics but we also spoke easily about books and films. Nemtsov quickly made an impression as a force for good and decency, in a Moscow where political and business corruption was rampant an Soviet-style repression and state-sanctioned murder were making a comeback, which became entrenched under Putin.
Suddenly our talk was interrupted by balled-up cloth napkins, salt and pepper shakers, and crude Russian insults being thrown at Nemtsov and his wife. This was directed at us by four or five thugs from a neighboring table wearing black leather jackets or flashy suits with skinhead or scompletely shaved scalps – caricature styles for gangsters or secret police – who liked to look intimidating.
Nemtsov put a protective arm around his wife but said: “These people are provocateurs. They want to cause a scandal for me.” Later he said they were either working for the Russian secret service now called the FSB or businessmen who hated him for his anti-corruption stance. But as objects and insults continued to be hurled, I and my companion, an American journalist called Matt Brzezinski, rose from our seats and began shouting back at the thugs.
They also rose and directed their venom against Matt and myself and it looked like a very unequal fight would erupt. The manager and a flock of waiters flooded the area and prevented a fight. They made a phone call, to what everyone probably believed was the police and I thought the thugs would be ejected. To my surprise Matt and I were ordered to leave while the thugs sniggered. But they left the Nemstovs and our other dinner companions alone.
However, the incident showed that Nemtsov, once a fast-rising politician under the 1990s administration of then Russian President Boris Yeltsin, was increasingly being regarded an enemy by the alliance of former secret police and corrupt businessmen which would propel Putin to supreme power. It took immense courage to throw down the gauntlet to Putin and try to build a cohesive Russian pro-democracy opposition. All the time aware that Putin wanted him dead and latterly publicly expressing that worry yet remaining defiant.
The next time I saw Nemtsov was when I was reporting about Ukraine’s Orange Revolution demonstrations in 2004, which he enthusiastically supported. Nemtsov said that he hoped that if Ukraine could bring about reforms that solidified human rights and the rule of law, cleanse corruption and become a successful market that would nudge his own Russia on the road to becoming the democratic and fair society he dreamed of.
And it was those same ideals that Nemtsov was fighting for right until the moment his assailants pumped four bullets into him. Nemtsov is the latest in a number of Russian democracy and justice campaigners to be murdered like Russian Duma member, Galina Starovoitova, journalist Anna Politkovska, and former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko murdered with a nuclear poison in London.
In the previous murders, the person who ordered the killings has never been found, only small fry who did not know they had been hired by people obeying Putin’s wishes, although perhaps without having to receive direct orders.
Most who know about the Russian security services or who live in Putin’s Russia or whose countries have experienced Moscow’s aggression have no doubt that Putin is responsible for all these murders. As in some of the previous assassinations, Putin’s reaction has been to say that he is not stupid and that he would not be involved in a killing where he automatically become the chief suspect and has suggested the victims, in this case Nemtsov, were killed in a plot to discredit him. Putin, who has appointed himself chief investigator of Nemtsov’s murder, in fact set the scene for such a killing in 2012 when he told supporters that the opposition would likely sacrifice one of their own to taint Putin and the Kremlin’s reputation.
Nemtsov stood for not only reform in the Russia but had become a rallying point for his countrymen who wanted to stop the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called Nemtsov a bridge between the two countries that had now been destroyed. But it is not just a bridge that has been destroyed. With Nemtsov’s death a voice against the Kremlin aggression that could trigger war even beyond Ukraine’s borders has now been brutally silenced.
Askold Krushelnycky is a former Kyiv Post chief editor.
