Tens of thousands of people marched through Moscow on Sunday to honor Boris Nemtsov, the Russian opposition politician who was shot dead on Friday night in an attack that had the hallmarks of a contract killing.
The assassination of one of Vladimir Putin’s harshest critics has sent shockwaves across Russia, evoking deep-seated fears of violent political upheaval.
Although the Russian president has pledged to hunt down Mr Nemtsov’s killers, many people who joined the memorial march said the Kremlin, and its increasingly repressive policies, were at least indirectly responsible for the tragedy.
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Sunday’s rally replaced the earlier planned Spring March where Mr Nemtsov was due to lead opposition groups protesting against the economic crisis and Russian support for separatist rebels fighting in Ukraine.
The huge crowd – police said there were more than 21,000 people, while independent monitors estimated 50,000 – wove its way through the historic city centre and along the Moscow river embankment to the bridge near the heavily-guarded Kremlin where Mr Nemtsov was shot.
An eerie quiet hung over the event as a government surveillance helicopter circled in the rain-filled clouds overhead. “We have not only come to mourn Boris. We are mourning for the whole of Russia,” said Mikhail, a businessmen who had travelled 400km from the Volga river town of Nizhny Novgorod, east of Moscow, to join the gathering.
Police had forbidden opposition leaders to address the crowd and banned the chanting of political slogans. Instead people carried homemade signs reading “Je suis Boris,” “The system kills,” and “You can’t kill all of us.”
With the murder of Nemtsov, Russia had crossed into a time of “political nightmare” with no end in sight, said pensioner Nikolai Glushanov. “We are becoming a closed country again like the Soviet Union,” he said. There’s hardly anywhere else like this except North Korea.”
Mourners had been streaming to lay flowers at the place where Nemtsov died ever since news of the 55-year-old politician’s murder broke late on Friday night. By the time the march arrived on Sunday the bridge parapets were stacked with colorful bouquets lit by candles guttering in the freezing rain.
As the Kremlin clock struck 6pm police began urging the crowd over a loudspeaker to disperse. The march passed without disturbance. Russia’s interior ministry reported 50 arrests.