Boris Nemtsov, 2015
Back in the 1990s, Nemtsov was one of the most prominent “young reformers” of post-Soviet Russia. He rapidly became a deputy prime minister and he was, for a long time, seen as a possible presidential material.
However, it was Putin who managed to become the next president in 2000, after Boris Yeltsin. Nemtsov was fond of the choice, but he still became more and more critical of Putin, especially after he decided to roll back civil liberties and was eventually pushed to the margins of Russian political life.
Nemstov conducted massive street rallies in the protests of the 2011 parliamentary election results and even wrote reports on official corruption. He also got arrested many times, as the Kremlin eventually cracked down on all the opposition rallies.
Then, in February 2015, only a couple of hours after he urged the public to join a march that opposed Russia’s military involvement in Ukraine, Nemtsov was shot four times in the back. Putin then proceeded to take “personal control” of the investigation into Nemtsov’s murder, and the killer is still free.
