Boris Nemtsov funeral: Russia restricts foreign mourners

SEVERAL EU politicians and Russia’s opposition leader have been barred from attending the funeral of murdered Russian politician Boris Nemtsov.

A Polish politician was denied a visa and a Latvian MEP turned back at a Moscow airport, while Alexei Navalny was denied permission to leave jail.

A long line of mourners paid their final respects at Nemtsov’s coffin at Moscow’s Sakharov human rights centre.

The coffin was then removed to be taken for burial in a city cemetery.

He is being interred at Troyekurovskoye Cemetery, where murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya was buried in 2006.

Nemtsov, a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, was killed on a bridge near the Kremlin wall on Friday night.

No arrests have been made and no clear motive has been established for the crime.

New CCTV footage of the presumed getaway car has been released by a pro-Kremlin Russian news website, LifeNews. The video shows a vehicle making its way along Moscow streets but there is no close-up on the suspects inside.

The crowds will remember a man who was full of energy and life, who burst on to the political scene in the 1990s as a young reformer, who believed passionately in democracy. He was never afraid to speak his mind, to campaign and to criticise.

In recent years he had been a fierce opponent of President Putin, exposing corruption and speaking out against the war in Ukraine.

Boris Nemtsov was shot dead – with four bullets to the back – just beside the Kremlin. It should be one of the most secure spots in the country but more than three days on, police still do not have a suspect, the murder weapon or even the getaway car.

There is nothing to explain for sure why Nemtsov was killed and why, so demonstratively, right in the heart of Russia’s capital.