Fear Envelops Russia After Killing of Putin Critic

Given the murder of Boris Y. Nemtsov - a former deputy prime minister and leading Putin critic - on a Moscow street, it is hard not to wonder if we aren't seeing yet another phase of Vladimir Putin's apparent reprise of the techniques of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime.  Just as Hitler promised that justice would be done and killers prosecuted when in fact Hitler was behind the murders, Putin is claiming that everything possible will be done to apprehend Nemtsov's killer(s).  Is Putin to be believed?  Time will tell, but I suspect not.  The New York Times looks at the fear gripping Russia.  Here are excerpts:

About two weeks before he was shot and killed in the highest-profile political assassination in Russia in a decade, Boris Y. Nemtsov met with an old friend to discuss his latest research into what he said was dissembling and misdeeds in the Kremlin.

He was, as always, pugilistic and excited, saying he wanted to publish the research in a pamphlet to be called “Putin and the War,” about President Vladimir V. Putin and Russian involvement in the Ukraine conflict, recalled Yevgenia Albats, the editor of New Times magazine. Both knew the stakes.

Mr. Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, knew his work was dangerous but tried to convince her that, as a former high official in the Kremlin, he enjoyed immunity, Ms. Albats said.

On Saturday, it was still not clear who was responsible for killing Mr. Nemtsov. Some critics of the Kremlin accused the security services of responsibility, while others floated the idea of rogue Russian nationalists on the loose in Moscow.

The authorities said they were investigating several theories about the crime, some immediately scorned as improbable, including the possibility that fellow members of the opposition had killed Mr. Nemtsov to create a martyr. Mr. Putin, for his part, vowed in a letter to Mr. Nemtsov’s mother to bring to justice those responsible.

As supporters of Mr. Nemtsov laid flowers on the sidewalk where he was shot and killed late Friday, a shiver of fear moved through the political opposition in Moscow.

The worry was that the killing would become a pivot point toward a revival of lethal violence among the leadership elite in Moscow and an intensified climate of fear in Russian domestic politics.

Mr. Milov posted an online statement saying, “There is ever less doubt that the state is behind the murder of Boris Nemtsov,” and that the intention was to revive a culture of fear in Moscow. “The motive was to sow fear,” he wrote.

Ilya Yashin, a political ally of Mr. Nemtsov’s, drew attention again to the pamphlet Mr. Nemtsov was preparing on Russian military aid to pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine. Speaking on the Echo of Moscow radio station, he said Mr. Nemtsov had “some materials that directly proved” the participation of the Russian army in the Donbas war in Ukraine.  Mr. Yashin said he knew no details, or what had become of those materials.

Ms. Albats, who had discussed with Mr. Nemtsov his unfinished exposé, said of this state of affairs in domestic Russian politics, “We are at war now.”  “Those who are believers in democracy, those who for some reason, back in the late 1980s, got on board this train, and had all these hopes and aspirations,” she said, “they are at war today.”