Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Something Strange Going On in the Kremlin

The news coming out of Russia could not be stranger. The confessed assassin of Boris Nemtsov is visited by a human rights activist and claims he was tortured into a confession. Intelligence services first claim that Kremlin surveillance cameras were down for maintenance at the time of the assassination. Next, we hear that the cameras picked up images of the assassins near the crime scene. The puppet leader of Chechnya praises  the confessed (but confession withdrawn) killer as a pious Muslim, but his mother says he has no interest in religion. Rumors or a “shooting list” are laughed off by Putin’s official spokesman. Putin himself has not been seen in public since March 8 and apparently will skip an important meeting in Kazakhstan – for reasons of illness? The head of the security services is making announcements about the progress of the case instead of the usual Investigation Committee.

Instead of a neat roll out of confessions, quick sentencing, and disappearance into prison we have denials, different versions of events, and apparent turf wars. The name of the actual organizer of the killing is circulating on social media.


Has the Nemtsov murder caused Kremlin politics to spin out of control? What is going on?

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