Russian Politician Shot Dead

A top politician gunned down on a Moscow street may have been assassinated by the Islamic State, Russian investigators have claimed. 

Former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov was blasted four times in the back before a march against the war in Ukraine.

The Kremlin said Vladimir Putin, who condemned the killing, would oversee the investigation into his death.

Today an investigative committee said there are several lines of inquiry, including a possible Islamic extremist terror attack.

Another line of enquiry is that is was politically motivated, the Interfax news agency reported.

Mr Nemtsov served as the first Deputy Prime Minister under late president Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s.

The 55-year-old had said he feared President Mr Putin would have him killed.

Mr Nemtsov died just before a march in Moscow against the war in Ukraine which he was actively promoting.

According to Russian-language news website Meduza, “several people” got out of a car and shot him.

Russian chess grandmaster and political activist Garry Kasparov said:

“Devastated to hear of the brutal murder of my long-time opposition colleague Boris Nemtsov. Shot 4 times, once for each child he leaves.”

Kasparov followed up with a series of tweets critical of Putin.

One read: “Politkovskaya was gunned down. MH17 was shot out of the sky. Now Boris is dead. As always, Kremlin will blame opposition, or CIA, whatever.”

A police spokeswoman on the scene said he had been walking on a bridge over the Moskva River with a Ukrainian woman.

Police cars sealed off the bridge close to the red walls of the Kremlin and Red Square, and an ambulance was on the scene.

Mikhail Kasyanov, a fellow opposition leader, told reporters at the bridge: “That a leader of the opposition could be shot beside the walls of the Kremlin is beyond imagination. There can be only one version: that he was shot for telling the truth.”

Kasyanov, a former prime minister under Putin, called Nemtsov a “fighter for the truth”.

Like other opposition leaders, Nemtsov was a fighter against corruption.