What Boris Nemtsov’s death means for Russia’s opposition movement

BOSTON — It appears to be a cold-blooded assault on a Kremlin critic.

Last Friday, former Russian Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, an outspoken opposition leader, was shot dead a stone’s throw from President Vladimir Putin's seat of power. The details of the crime are shrouded in mystery. No one has been arrested. 

Putin condemned the killing and promised Nemtsov’s mother in a telegram that “everything will be done so that the organizers and executors of this vile and cynical murder are punished,” Reuters reported.

US President Barack Obama called on the Russian government to “conduct a prompt, impartial, and transparent investigation into the circumstances of his murder and ensure that those responsible for this vicious killing are brought to justice.” 

Although several opposition figures have risen to prominence in the public sphere, including blogger Alexei Navalny, Russia’s opposition has been somewhat fragmented. With Nemtsov’s murder, where does that leave the movement? 

Heres’s what writers and analysts who cover Russia are saying.

Konstantin von Eggert in the BBC:

[Muscovites debate whether Nemtsov’s murder] will become a watershed for Russian society and for the Kremlin's opponents. … Eventually the opposition will need leaders, if and when the system opens itself up to free and fair elections. By then, it will be clearer [to] see who has the best chance of winning. For now, though, it appears that greater trust should be placed with those who conquered their fears and took to the streets, because at this moment their political intuition is worth a lot.

Julia Ioffe in The New York Times:

Until relatively recently, the risks opposition activists knew they were taking on were not generally thought to be life-threatening. … This began to change with the arrests of protesters in the summer of 2012. When Navalny was sentenced to five years in prison a year later, it came as a shock; this had never been done before. Even after the sentence was suspended, it seemed to be a warning to the opposition. Nemtsov’s assassination took that warning to its logical conclusion.

Shaun Walker in the Guardian:

With the murder of Boris Nemtsov, Russia’s beleaguered liberal opposition has lost one of its last audible voices. There was a brief period, after parliamentary elections in late 2011, when street dissent seemed on the rise, and large rallies gripped Moscow. … Among the “non-systemic” opposition, there are few politicians who have much of a national profile, with the restrictions of state television meaning it is hard to gain a real platform.

Elizabeth Piper in Reuters:

Opposition leaders have failed so far to unite the critics of Putin's leadership, hamstrung by his popular appeal to patriotism. Nor have they been able to overcome their own rivalries and differences. But Nemtsov’s murder may have broken a psychological barrier, wrote Vedomosti, a business daily that is critical of the government and whose future is in doubt.

Andrei Kolesnikov in Deutsche Welle:

Will this opposition consolidate, for example? I think no, because it [Sunday's march] was only a moral reaction, not a political reaction at all. It was a quiet and sad manifestation. So there will not be any kind of political consequences. … People are supporting, in their compromised way, but they are supporting the authorities, Putin as well, so they didn't feel some deep notions concerning some very important events around them. 

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