Video footage of the cold Moscow night shows men getting out of cars, running, darting under the bridge, cars fleeing; a snowplow masking the execution. A beautiful Ukrainian woman is taken by police: Snare or victim? We may never know. She was taken into custody before being allowed to return to Kyiv on March 2. Such is the start of Putin’s “full and transparent” investigation. Crimes within crimes.
Who killed Nemtsov?
He was taken out by those who clean up Putin’s crimes. By those who genuflect and applaud his lies and ersatz patriotism. By the frenzy of hate flowing from him and his ilk — Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, Russian President Sergei Lavrov, propagandist Aleksandr Dugin– towards a democratic Russia, towards Ukraine, NATO, the United States and all Western democracies.
The hate creates a blood-thirsty mentality equivalent to that which sent Christian to the lions. Singers, orchestra conductors, hockey icons who sell their talents in pro-Putin’s “charm “ offensive killed Nemtsov. “Useful idiots” who make a living in our institutions of learning teaching sedition under the cover of free speech.
People like Edward Snowden and those like Moti Nissani, formerly of Wayne State University, who within hours produced a lengthy piece in Pravda. It rivals the best fuhrer-worship journalism. Nissani writes “…everyone agrees that Putin is a brilliant strategist and politician. …One has just to watch him improvising a press conference, calmly, competently, and tirelessly, to realize that one is dealing here with…superb statesmanship.” Putin’s last press conference comprised a three-hour-long monologue.
The author wonders what Putin would gain by killing Nemtsov “a small potato, a minor irritant.” And answers by asking, “Does Putin need to kill a man who says that Crimea should effectively belong to Russia’s enemies …despite Crimea’s critical importance to Russian security?”
Those endorsing Putin’s terror in Ukraine killed Nemtsov. Putin could not tolerate its rejection of his corrupted and backward empire in favour of the West. Such insolence needed punishment. Will 5,000 dead Ukrainians and no official release of Russia’s dead but estimated in the tens of thousands satiate his need for blood? Nemtsev said that this unnecessary war was not Russia’s war but Putin’s war for the “preservation of personal power and money at any cost.” Nemtsov was compiling a tally of its devastating losses. He was eliminated just like in 2006, when journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was compiling the cost of the Putin’s other war, his needless destruction of Chechnya, was killed.
The West had a hand in his murder, and in those of others. Its misguided decision-makers, hoping to “understand” Putin, reset buttons, give cease-fires a chance only unleash further terror, this time focused in Ukraine. They, de facto, position 63,000 Russian troops on its border. Meanwhile international sages “allege “ that his “humanitarian” convoys might be carrying military hardware. The OSCE is complicit. It conveniently cannot see Putin breaking cease-fire nor his soldiers running back and forth across the boarder in a semblance of withdrawal.
Putin’s collaborators, leaders of the free world who are not up to the task of bringing an international terrorist to justice, killed Boris Nemtsov. So did NATO. Created to protect democracy, it is incapable of finding a new way to deal with Putin’s new insanity running amuck in the world. To its shame, NATO watches from the safe haven while its three-trillion dollar budget rusts. (Breedlove, what would the first Supreme Commander of NATO, General Eisenhower say?) Meanwhile, Nemtsov and thousands of young men get shot, burned for sport, beheaded, mutilated. No, these are not ISIS rag-tag terrorists’ brutalities: These are Putin’s.
No wonder Nemtsov called the war in Ukraine Putin’s insanity. He was killed for protesting Putin’s politics in Russia, the terror in Ukraine, the illegal abduction and incarceration of another hero, Ukraine’s imprisoned fighter pilot Nadiya Savchenko. She is starving to death rather than submit to Putin. Doctors say she only has four-five days left.
Nemtsov said, that Savchenko’s life is more important than Putin’s. Like Nemtsov, she is the symbol of the future; Putin is history’s scum. One order executed Nemtsov but many killed him. All of us did by responding to our base greed for money and a comfortable life, rather than to what is right. Some 40,000 did the right thing by joining in Moscow’s tribute march to him. Those who did not endorsed his murder.
History has a hard lesson for collaborators. Do the right thing, Breedlove.
Oksana Bashuk Hepburn, former policy executive in the Government of Canada, is an opinion writer.
