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Thousands Honor Boris Nemtsov, Putin Critic Killed in Russia Thousands Honor Boris Nemtsov, Putin Critic Killed in Russia
(about 4 hours later)
MOSCOW — Carrying flowers and votive candles, thousands of Russians paid their final respects on Tuesday to the slain opposition leader Boris Y. Nemtsov, whose body lay at the Sakharov Center here. MOSCOW — The funeral on Tuesday for Boris Y. Nemtsov, the assassinated Kremlin critic, drew a gloomy band of politicians and supporters from the faltering liberal opposition, with mourners grieving that they were burying not just a friend, but also their dream for a different Russia.
Diplomats showed up somberly bearing wreaths, political allies offered eulogies to Mr. Nemtsov, who was shot dead Friday evening in central Moscow, and all the while, his mother and children cried softly over his open coffin. “Now that he is in the grave, the last hope for Russia is in the grave,” said Vladimir N. Voynovich, a famous Russian novelist who, like Mr. Nemtsov, has been outspoken in criticizing Russia’s role in the war in Ukraine. “He was one of the last optimists in this country.”
“Sleep in peace, our comrade, your work will be continued,” Gennady Gudkov, a former member of Parliament and a political ally of Mr. Nemtsov’s, said at the memorial at the Sakharov Center, a traditional site for opposition politics here. Thousands of Muscovites bearing flowers and red votive candles lined up early in the morning to pay their final respects to Mr. Nemtsov, 55, whose body lay in an open coffin at the Sakharov Center. By early afternoon, hundreds still clogged the sidewalk outside as the coffin was transferred to a hearse for the long ride to the pine-covered Troyekurovskoye Cemetery, filled with the black granite headstones favored by the city’s elite.
After the viewing, a funeral procession wound its way through Moscow to a cemetery that was a wintry scene of bare trees and snow, where the family made their last goodbyes and pallbearers lowered Mr. Nemtsov into the ground. Mr. Nemtsov was once one of President Boris Yeltsin’s bright young things, among the mavericks brought into the Kremlin to force the transition from centrally planned communism to capitalism in the early 1990s.
His killing was the highest-profile political assassination in Russia during the tenure of President Vladimir V. Putin, and the sad pageantry of the funeral offered a lens on the state of domestic politics. There was little evidence of a nation coming together in the face of tragedy. Russians remember that era for chaos more than anything else, and the political fortunes of Mr. Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister once discussed as possible presidential timber, faded. Naina Yeltsina, the widow of the president, attended the memorial service, as did many former top Yeltsin aides.
Senior Kremlin figures were absent, and Russia denied entry to two European politicians who had planned to attend, Bogdan Borusewicz, the speaker of the Polish Senate, and Sandra Kalniete, a member of the European Parliament from Latvia. Aleksei L. Kudrin, a former deputy prime minister and finance minister and a longtime ally of Mr. Putin’s while supporting liberal economic policies, lamented a state of affairs in Russia in which “in a debate with an opponent, bullets serve as an argument.”
Moscow did not give explanations for refusing entry to the two officials, Reuters reported, but it said some Europeans were on a blacklist drawn up in retaliation for Western travel restrictions imposed on Russians close to the Kremlin. Receiving the well-wishers at the coffin was the hunched, tiny figure of Dina Eidman, Mr. Nemtsov’s mother, who had raised him as a single parent in poverty, watched him soar to the heights of the Russian government, and then in recent months reportedly told her son that she feared that Mr. Putin would kill him for his criticism of the war in Ukraine.
A lawyer for Aleksei A. Navalny, the most prominent leader of the beleaguered opposition, said a judge had denied Mr. Navalny’s petition to be released from jail to attend the funeral. Mr. Navalny is serving a two-week sentence for handing out leaflets on the subway. In their eulogies, politicians spoke about the need to fearlessly pursue Mr. Nemtsov’s often lonely crusade against corruption, mismanagement and the Ukraine war. At the same time, they acknowledged that the assassination late Friday night sent fear rippling through their ranks as surely as the winter chill seeping through multiple layers of clothing on this gray Moscow day.
Also absent were the chess champion Garry Kasparov, a co-founder of the Solidarity Party with Mr. Nemtsov, who is living outside Russia and said he feared to return, and the prominent economist Sergei M. Guriev, also in exile. “I have all reasons to believe it is still dangerous for me to show up in Russia,” Mr. Guriyev told RBK newspaper. “Our country has changed,” Dmitry Gudkov, a young member of Parliament, said at the cemetery, where 2,000 people showed up. “A week ago we lived in a country where opposition figures feared being jailed or facing house arrest. But now we are even afraid of wandering around the city.”
The highest-ranking member of the government to pay his respects was Arkady Dvorkovich, a deputy prime minister and protégé of Prime Minister Dmitry A. Medvedev, who did not appear, though Mr. Medvedev’s spokeswoman, Natalya Timakova, did. Mr. Nemtsov was shot a couple of hundred yards from the imposing red walls of the Kremlin, one of the most guarded sites in Moscow. Law enforcement officials have not publicly identified any suspects. Although there are several unsolved, high-profile murders in Russia involving whistle-blowers who exposed government corruption, politicians were considered safe until now.
The Putin administration sent its representative in the Parliament, Garry V. Minks, a midlevel official, to represent Mr. Putin. Both the memorial service and the burial were notable for those who did not attend. Neither President Vladimir V. Putin nor anyone from the Kremlin elite was there, although Mr. Putin, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Parliament sent identical giant wreaths of red roses and carnations to the graveside.
All 28 European Union ambassadors to Russia turned up en masse, bearing flowers and condolences, as did the American ambassador to Russia, John F. Tefft. “He will long be remembered in Russia and around the world as a true patriot of Russia,” Mr. Tefft said. Mr. Putin’s envoy was an obscure official, Garry V. Minkh, his parliamentary liaison officer.
Among those attending was Naina Yeltsina, the widow of the former Russian president Boris Yeltsin. A spokesman for Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, now in faltering health, told RBK that Mr. Gorbachev would send a wreath. The highest-ranking member of the government to pay his respects was Arkady Dvorkovich, a deputy prime minister and protégé of Mr. Medvedev’s, along with Mr. Medvedev’s spokeswoman, Natalya Timakova. Diplomats from all 28 European Union members showed up, many bearing wreaths, as did the American ambassador to Russia, John F. Tefft.
From the business elite, Mikhail Prokhorov, the oligarch who owns the Brooklyn Nets basketball team, paid his respects, as did his sister, Irina Prokhorova, who is active in Russian politics. “It’s a shame that in our country, a person has to die horribly for people to understand he was great,” Ms. Prokhorova said. The oil magnate Mikhail Fridman brought a wreath. The event opened a new fissure in the already strained ties between Moscow and the European Union after two lawmakers were not allowed into the country to attend the funeral — Bogdan Borusewicz, the speaker of the Polish Senate, and Sandra Kalniete, a member of the European Parliament from Latvia.
Aleksei L. Kudrin, a former deputy prime minister and finance minister, and a longtime ally of Mr. Putin while supporting liberal economic policies, lamented a state of affairs in Russia in which “in a debate with an opponent bullets serve as an argument.” Russia explained that the two were on a secret list of those barred for “anti-Russian activities.”
“This is a line we’ve crossed,” he said. Alexei Navalny, the opposition activist whose rise served to eclipse Mr. Nemtsov, was also absent, serving a 15-day jail term for breaking the rules on organizing demonstrations. Mr. Navalny issued a statement on social media accusing the government of indirectly ordering the killing.
Receiving the well-wishers at the coffin was the hunched, tiny figure of Dina Eidman, Mr. Nemtsov’s mother, who had raised him as a single parent in poverty, watched him soar to the heights of the Russian government, and then in recent months reportedly told her son she feared Mr. Putin would kill him for his criticism of the war in Ukraine. The Kremlin has repeatedly denied any such involvement. Many mourners blamed state-run television for creating the atmosphere in which Mr. Nemtsov was killed, singling him out constantly as “an enemy of the state,” a favorite term for those eliminated under Stalin.
In an emotional speech at the Sakharov Center, Ilya Yashin, an ally of Mr. Nemtsov’s in organizing street protests, said of Mr. Nemtsov’s death — he was shot in the back while walking along a sidewalk — “this is how heroes leave us.” Mr. Nemtsov’s death did not put a halt to such efforts. Life News, a news site and cable news channel, was plugging its reports describing Mr. Nemtsov as a serial philanderer.
“He could have easily lived in comfort abroad, but he chose another path, and it cost his life,” Mr. Yashin said. “Borya left as a hero. This is how heroes leave us. Forgive us, Borya. Rest in peace.” The liberal opposition represents a tiny slice of the political landscape in Russia, with Mr. Putin garnering overwhelming support for his robust nationalism, starting with the annexation of Crimea last year.
Some people in the crowd expressed both alarm and guilt about Mr. Nemtsov’s killing — alarm that a political figure could be gunned down in central Moscow and guilt that they had not given him more attention and support when he was alive, admiring him for being fearless but also wondering if he might have been emotionally unbalanced.
Grigory G. Sheyanov, 38, a doctor, acknowledged as he walked past the coffin at the memorial service that he and others were somewhat ashamed for having ignored Mr. Nemtsov even while they were interested in the issues he raised.
“This event was a real shock for me,” said another mourner, Tatiana Limanova, 43, who came to the cemetery. “I feel like I have been knocked off my feet and don’t know how to get back up. I don’t know what will happen tomorrow, and I am afraid.”