Orders to Kill

by Amy Knight

  Nemtsov was a larger-than-life figure—handsome, charismatic, and relentlessly energetic. What immediately comes to mind when contemplating Nemtsov is that he was the complete opposite of his nemesis, Putin. Physically they were like night and day—Nemtsov dark-haired, muscular, swarthy, and much taller than the diminutive, balding, beady-eyed Putin. Putin, as we know, has gone to great lengths to portray himself as macho, riding a horse bare-chested, shooting tigers, and doing other stunts designed to showcase his virility. The telegenic Nemtsov had no need to choreograph such an image. He was by nature the very man who Putin was not. It cannot have set well with the Russian president when Nemtsov even joked in an interview about Putin’s small stature, remarking that “all Russia’s fierce tyrants have been small—Ivan the Terrible, Lenin, Stalin.”1

  Unlike the secretive and inscrutable Putin, the gregarious Nemtsov, fifty-five when he was killed, was completely transparent, letting everything about himself be known, including his business dealings and love affairs. (He readily admitted: “I have a problem, though I don’t consider it a problem. I love women and I can’t do anything about it.”2) But of course what really set Putin and Nemtsov apart was Nemtsov’s firm belief in democratic elections and a free market, and his conviction that Russia needed to adopt Western political and economic values. In the years after he became Russia’s leader, Putin became convinced, particularly after the departure of George W. Bush as the U.S. president in 2009, that the West was Russia’s enemy. His Kremlin supporters followed suit and embarked on an unprecedented anti-Western campaign through the television media, a campaign that continues to this day.

  Nemtsov went against the grain of this approach and actively courted the West, which greatly rankled the Kremlin. His shooting, allegedly by a group of hired thugs from Chechnya, eliminated one of Putin’s main political opponents. Putin’s press secretary, Dmitrii Peskov, insisted on the day after the murder that Nemtsov was not important to the Kremlin: “With all due respect to the memory of Boris Nemtsov, in political terms he did not pose any threat to the current Russian leadership or Vladimir Putin. If we compare popularity levels, Putin’s and the government’s ratings and so on, in general Boris Nemtsov was just a bit more than an average citizen.”3 But if one considers Nemtsov’s unrelenting efforts to expose the corruption, authoritarianism, and unwarranted military aggression of Putin’s Russia, it is clear that Peskov’s statement was far from the truth.

  Nemtsov the Politician

  A talented physicist, Nemtsov embarked on politics even before the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, running for the Russian parliament successfully as a delegate in the Gorky region (later called Nizhny Novgorod). Like many other scientists whose careers had been stifled during the Soviet period, Nemtsov, then in his early thirties, saw the new Yeltsin government as an opportunity to make positive political change in his country. As an active member of the Russian parliament, he drew the attention of Yeltsin, who appointed him governor of Nizhny Novgorod in November 1991, a post Nemtsov held until 1997 after winning the popular vote for the governorship in 1995.4

  Nemtsov looked to the West as a model for economic development and introduced wide-ranging market reforms in his region. The author of a 1997 profile of the politician observed: “During Nemtsov’s five years as governor, Nizhny Novgorod oblast [region] became a model province, according to all the indicators. It can justly claim to be the only region in Russia in which economic reforms have been pursued consistently.”5 Nemtsov did not hesitate to speak his mind, even when it meant opposing the policies of Yeltsin. After Yeltsin brought troops into Chechnya in December 1994 to subdue an increasingly violent movement for independence there, Nemtsov delivered a petition against that war to Yeltsin with over a million signatures. (So much for the Kremlin’s theory that Nemtsov was murdered because he was hated by the Chechen people.) This contrarian move did not stop Yeltsin from appointing Nemtsov first deputy prime minister in 1997, a post that some, including Yeltsin, considered a stepping stone to the presidency.6

  The 1998 financial crisis in Russia led to the resignation of Nemtsov, who had concerned himself with Russian economic affairs. But he did not give up politics. In late 1999, he ran successfully for a seat in the Duma as a leader of a new liberal-democratic coalition, the Union of Right Forces (SPS), and in early 2000 he became deputy speaker of that body. Early on, as Nemtsov recounts in Confessions of a Rebel, he and fellow party leader Anatoly Chubais had grave doubts about Putin as a candidate for the Russian presidency, mainly because Putin was a product of the KGB: “Both Chubais and I experienced a huge shock over the decision by the president [Yeltsin] to choose Putin as his successor.”7 But when it came to the SPS deciding whether or not to support Putin in the 2000 presidential elections, Nemtsov and Chubais disagreed. Nemtsov was against the idea, but he was outvoted by others in the SPS leadership, including Chubais. As a result of backing Putin, Nemtsov’s party lost its support among the people it needed most, liberal democrats, and became marginalized. In the parliamentary elections of December 2003, the SPS failed dismally and did not earn enough votes to be represented in the new Duma. This defeat began Nemtsov’s career as an outsider who would devote all his energy to opposing the Putin regime.8

  Nemtsov the Kremlin Critic

  After his failure to be re-elected to the Duma, Nemtsov decided that the only way to unseat Putin was to publicize his transgressions, in particular human-rights abuses and the rampant corruption among Kremlin elites. This he did, through meticulous research, publishing a series of reports (doklady) from 2008 onward. The first such report, co-written with his colleague Vladimir Milov, was “Putin. The Results” (2008), a scathing denunciation of Putin’s first eight years in power. Just one citation from the report is enough to give the gist: “Assets are being removed from state ownership and handed over to the control of private people, property is being purchased with state money back from the oligarchs at stunning prices, a friends-of-Putin oil export monopoly is being created, and a Kremlin ‘black safe’ [slush fund] is being funded. This is a brief outline of the criminal system of government that has taken shape under Putin.”9

  As mentioned earlier, just after the report came out, I was able to meet Milov in Moscow, where he told me it had caused a huge stir in the Kremlin. This was confirmed by Lilia Shevtsova, a political analyst at Moscow’s Carnegie Center, who informed me that the report was like a “bomb, which anywhere but in Russia would cause the country to collapse.”10 The report’s appraisal of Putin and his administration was so damning that the Kremlin attempted, with considerable success, to block its distribution. The publisher, Novaia gazeta, originally planned on a first printing of 100,000. But the distributor backed out at the last minute because of strong pressure from the Kremlin. This left Novaia gazeta with only one place in the entire country to sell the book—its own kiosk on Moscow’s Pushkin Square. As a result, only five thousand copies were printed, and by mid-March 2008 only two thousand had been sold.10

  This publication was followed over the next years with further reports by Nemtsov, all focused on corruption in the Kremlin and on Putin’s increasing authoritarianism. Of particular note was “Winter Olympics in the Subtropics,” which appeared in May 2013 and described the folly of the choice of Sochi for the Olympics, the unprecedented amount of government money spent to prepare for the games, and the vast corruption that was part of the process.11

  The report, which Nemtsov co-authored with his colleague Leonid Martynyuk, pointed out the huge costs involved in the construction for the games and the lucrative contracts that were awarded to Putin cronies. The authors predicted that the total expenditure on the Olympics by the Russian government would be $50 billion—more than four times the original estimate of $12 billion. Acknowledging that most governments spend double their initial estimates on the Olympics, they observed: “The cost of the Sochi Olympics, based on the global average, should have been $24 billion (i.e., Putin’s $12 billion, multiplied by two). The remainde
r—$26 billion—consisted of embezzlement and kickbacks.” For Putin, the fact that Russia was hosting the 2014 games was a dream come true—an opportunity to bring prestige and glory back to his country. Nemtsov and Martynyuk cast the shadow of corruption upon this event.

  These writings would have been all the more devastating for Putin had they reached a wide audience in Russia. But they did not, despite the efforts of a team of Nemtsov supporters to distribute them throughout the country—at metro stations, polling places, and other venues. Nemtsov and his colleagues simply did not have the resources to get their message out to the general population and to counter the Kremlin’s efforts to suppress their reports. But from the Kremlin’s point of view, these publications were nonetheless a grave threat. The so-called Orange Revolution in Ukraine, prompted by mass protests against government corruption and voting fraud in 2004–2005 and Russia’s own public unrest in 2011–2012, were doubtless foremost in the Kremlin’s mind.

  Equally offensive to the Kremlin were Nemtsov’s direct approaches to Western governments with his damning information about the Putin regime. In November 2010, Nemtsov spoke at a commemoration in Washington, D.C. of the 2009 death of Sergei Magnitsky, the lawyer who had exposed high-level government corruption in Russia. Nemtsov urged U.S. lawmakers to impose targeted sanctions against specific Kremlin officials who were involved in money laundering and human-rights violations. In June 2013, Nemtsov testified before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, calling on committee members to broaden the so-called Magnitsky Act, the bipartisan bill passed in 2012 to punish those Russian officials responsible for the death of the lawyer:

  With Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency in May 2012, Russia’s authoritarian regime has transitioned to a new stage of development—from the “sovereign democracy” characterized by election fraud, media censorship, and the harassment of the opposition, to overt political repression.… Unfortunately, the initial public list of violators that was published by the U.S. administration in April includes only eighteen names—none of them high-ranking. Too many of those responsible for repression and human rights abuses have been let off the hook. This is a grave strategic error. I hope that it will be corrected in the nearest future.12

  In the eyes of Putin and his allies, these actions were nothing short of treasonous. It was one thing for Nemtsov to be an active oppositionist at home, but to engage U.S. politicians in his struggle against the Kremlin was overstepping all bounds. It would only be a matter of time before Nemtsov would be eliminated.

  Finally, the Nemtsov family lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov, has mentioned another possible reason for the murder—a statement Nemtsov made about Putin at a forum in Kiev in the spring of 2014. In response to a question from a woman in the audience, Nemtsov asserted that “Putin is really fucked up.” After the woman posted the statement on the internet, according to Prokhorov, “the people in power in one republic, and in fact all over the country, and their close associates with criminal mindsets, decided that this remark required an equally strong response.” The Russian Investigative Committee began a criminal case against Nemtsov for slandering the president, but the case was subsequently dropped.13

  Nemtsov was very aware that he was in danger. According to his close friend Yevgenia Albats, editor of the New Times magazine, “He was afraid of being killed. And he was trying to convince himself, and me, they wouldn’t touch him because he [had been] a member of the Russian government, a vice premier, and they wouldn’t want to create a precedent. Because, as he said, [some] time the power will change hands in Russia again, and those who served Putin wouldn’t want to create this precedent.”14

  February 27, 2015

  It is no coincidence that Nemtsov was about to publish yet another scathing indictment of Putin, called “Putin.War,” which would document Russia’s covert military involvement in Ukraine. In an interview on radio Ekho Moskvy on February 27, just three hours before he was killed, Nemtsov said: “The main reason for the crisis [in Russia] is that Putin started this insane policy of war with Ukraine, which is aggressive and murderous for our country. The presence of Russian troops in Ukraine is well-documented.… Why are Russian soldiers being killed, while you, Mr. Putin, commander-chief, disown these soldiers by lying that they don’t take part in the fighting?”15

  After his radio interview, Nemtsov had a late dinner with his Ukrainian girlfriend, Anna Duritskaya, at the Café Bosco on Red Square. According to his colleague Milov, writing on LiveJournal (Zhivoi zhurnal) shortly after the murder, Nemtsov usually had his driver wait for him and then take him back to his apartment when he went out in the evening. Despite the harsh weather, he and Duritskaya apparently decided they would go home without the car. But they took an unusual route. Instead of walking north to Manezh Square, where they could have taken the subway home, they decided to walk south, across the Bol’shoi Moskvoretskii Bridge, about two hundred yards from the Kremlin. It was there that a man emerged and fired shots at Nemtsov from behind, fatally wounding him. (Duritskaya, who could not give a description of the assailant, was not hurt.) The killer then escaped from the scene in a car driven by an accomplice.16

  Several questions arise immediately. First, how did the killers know that the couple would be walking home, instead of going by car? And taking this unusual route? The only way they could have known would have been either through hacking Nemtsov’s cell phone and hearing his communication with his driver, or by some sophisticated technology that would have enabled them, while Nemtsov was dining, to listen to his conversation with Duritskaya. It is clear that, given the hugely congested traffic around the Kremlin, even at that late hour, the getaway car could not have been in place—and the killer there—without advance knowledge that Nemtsov and his companion would be walking across the bridge.

  It is highly unlikely that the killers would have had the means to conduct sophisticated surveillance, including possibly tracking Nemtsov’s movements through his cell phone, unless they had help from the Russian security services. Indeed, it is a known fact that the FSB, as a routine, followed Nemtsov’s every step. According to a report by Russia expert Catherine Fitzpatrick, “Proof that Nemtsov was under surveillance came with the publication of leaked cellphone calls in the past, intended to discredit him, and footage of his meetings on state TV. Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia, claimed on Twitter that he had personally seen cars speed after Nemtsov following visits with him.”17 Nemtsov himself complained about the surveillance, which, given that he was organizing a large protest march against Russian involvement in Ukraine for March 1, would have been especially concentrated on him at this time. Russian authorities later claimed that the Chechen killers had been following Nemtsov for months. Why then would they not have been noticed by the FSB?18

  The crime took place in an area that is normally under intense scrutiny—both with cameras and physical patrols—by the Federal Protection Service (FSO), which is under the direct control of the Russian president. This seemed an unlikely spot for the killers to choose, since Nemtsov was known to have walked the back alleys of Moscow alone at night and could easily have been shot where there were no police or surveillance cameras. Someone had told the killers that they could carry out their crime with impunity on that bridge near the Kremlin. As Milov pointed out, the police made no attempt to find the car with the killers until a half hour had elapsed after Nemtsov was shot. By this time, it was too late. The car was found hours later, abandoned in a Moscow suburb.

  Nemtsov’s Friends Speak Out

  Milov, for one, did not spare words in laying responsibility for the crime on Russian authorities: “I have practically no doubts that the murder of Boris Nemtsov was organized by the Russian security services.” He went on to say: “In some sense this might be revenge, analogous to the Litvinenko case. Nemtsov was not only considered a politician, playing this or that role in Russia, but also, in the opinion of the Kremlin, ‘guilty’ for the difficult situation the Putin establishme
nt was in because of [Western] sanctions.”19

  Yevgenia Albats observed in an interview with National Public Radio:

  Let’s face it: Boris Nemtsov was shot on one of the main bridges of Moscow just 100 meters [sic] from the Kremlin, which is heavily surveilled by the security cameras, which is under control of the Russian power institutions. If you try to do a photo op at the Moscow bridge where Boris was shot you would immediately face a policeman.… Either the so-called Russian law enforcement can’t do their job—except for following the opposition, tapping their phones, and putting peaceful opposition leaders into jail—or they don’t want to do their job, and that suggests that they were part of this plot to kill Boris.20

  It should be mentioned that Putin’s longtime St. Petersburg KGB comrade Evgenii Murov was FSO chief at this time. Recall that as far back as 2000 he was compiling hit lists of Putin’s opponents. (See chapter 2.)