Conspiracies Swirl Over Moscow Murder

Boris Nemtsov’s Murder and the Fate of Putin’s Critics

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The contract-style murder last Friday night of Boris Nemtsov, a vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has led to accusations of Kremlin complicity but also to a slew of competing theories involving everything from the CIA to Islamic militants and Ukrainian nationalists.

Many of the 51,600 people who protested Nemtsov’s death at a rally on Sunday, according to the volunteer group White Counter, implicated the government in the murder. A political cartoon reproduced as a poster by some attendees showed a picture of the Kremlin bristling with security cameras that were in fact pistols.