Nemtsov killing triggers Russia warnings

People hold a banner of Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, who was shot dead on Friday night, during a march to commemorate him in central St. Petersburg. Picture: Peter Kovalev

People hold a banner of Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov, who was shot dead on Friday night, during a march to commemorate him in central St. Petersburg. Picture: Peter Kovalev

Published Mar 3, 2015

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Geneva/ Moscow -

The killing of leading Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov sent an exchange of warnings and charges across Europe on Monday as a top Polish legislator was denied an entry visa to attend the funeral.

Bogdan Borusewicz, president of the Polish Senate, charged that Russian President Vladimir Putin was steering Russia into a dictatorship.

“This is without doubt an authoritarian system that is headed into a dictatorship,” the one-time rights activist said on Polish television TVN24.

Also on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that the murder, which occurred late Friday, must not be used to score political points.

“The attempt to use the heinous killing of Boris Nemtsov for political purposes is a sacrilege,” he said at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

“We must prevent any politicisation of the human rights agenda, or worse allowing it to be used as a tool for fuelling confrontation,” he said at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.

Nemtsov had been a vocal critic of Putin's Ukraine policies and had accused him of waging an undeclared war against Ukraine.

He was killed by multiple bullets while walking across a bridge near the Kremlin with his girlfriend.

Lavrov vowed that the perpetrators would be brought to justice, noting that Putin had taken control of the investigation.

A crowd of up to 50 000 on Sunday took part in a long-planned protest march through central Moscow on Sunday that Nemtsov was to have led.

Many participants carried placards with his picture.

Nemtsov's killer escaped unidentified, prompting opposition activists to accuse Putin of either ordering the killing or at least creating an atmosphere of political hatred that led to the crime.

Putin has called the killing a “provocation.” His spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian president will not attend the funeral. Instead, he is sending his representative in parliament, Garry Minkh, Peskov said according to Russian news agencies.

The highest foreign representative to announce his attendance was Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius.

“Heading to Moscow to pay tribute to Boris Nemtsov, to his courage & conviction,” Linkevicius wrote on Twitter.

Poland's Borusewicz said he had wanted “to honour Nemtsov and all Russians who think like him.”

A spokeswoman in the Russian embassy in Warsaw said Borusewicz's name was on a list of European Union politicians who may not get visas because of the sanctions levied against Moscow for its role in the Ukraine conflict.

“Russian officials fear that my presence in Moscow would contradict their claim that Poland is anti-Russian,” Borusewicz said.

“My visit was to have been a sign that for us, Russia is not just Putin but also (Andrei) Sakharov, Nemtsov (and others).”

Elmar Brok, who heads the foreign affairs committee of the European Parliament, said he did not expect a satisfactory investigation of Nemtsov's killing.

“The clarification of murders of opposition activists in Russia is normally an unmatched farce of abstruse suspicion and investigation, and I am fairly sure that Nemtsov's murder will also never be totally explained,” he said.

Brok noted that the leader of the probe is a university friend of Putin's.

Brok named a list of Russian opposition activists such as Alexi Navalny and chess champion Garry Kasparov, saying they could be the next victims.

Sapa-dpa

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