Former Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was reportedly shadowed by Russian agents on more than a dozen trips prior to his high-profile murder in 2015.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s biggest critic at the time was followed for 10 months leading up to his death by agents linked to the Russian Federal Security Service, according to an investigation by Bellingcat, Insider, and BBC.
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Travel itineraries and forensic analyses, among other evidence, were used to place FSB agent Valery Sukharev, along with at least one other operative on each occasion, on several of the trips shadowing Nemtsov, often arriving minutes or hours ahead of the anti-corruption activist.
Sukharev has also been linked to tailing Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in 2017 during his presidential campaign and possibly his poisoning in 2020.
Nemtsov was gunned down while walking home in Moscow with his girlfriend, Anna Duritskaya, hours after a public appearance at a march against Russia’s early military activities in Ukraine.
“Among Nemtsov’s final projects before he was killed in 2015 was a report exposing Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine, which President Vladimir Putin had denied. Though police ransacked Nemtsov’s apartment and confiscated his writings after his murder, they could not erase his legacy,” the Department of State said in a statement on the seventh anniversary of Nemstov’s death in February.
In 2017, five Chechen men were found guilty of the murder, though it is widely suspected the Russian government was involved in the attack. The Kremlin has denied any connection to Nemtsov’s death.
“All of this has nothing to do with the Russian government. It looks like another fabrication,” Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesman, told the BBC.
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Russia has a history of taking action against known Putin critics. Earlier this month, a Russian court sentenced Navalny, head of the Russia of the Future party, to an additional nine years in prison on fraud charges. Navalny was already serving a 2 1/2-year sentence.
