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[Subtitle: “I hope that my story will help you understand the methods of Russian operatives in Washington and how they use U.S. enablers to achieve major foreign policy goals without disclosing those interests,” Browder writes.]The financier Bill Browder has emerged as an unlikely central player in the ongoing investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Sergei Magnitsky, an attorney Browder hired to investigate official corruption, died in Russian custody in 2009. Congress subsequently imposed sanctions on the officials it held responsible for his death, passing the Magnitsky Act in 2012. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government retaliated, among other ways,...

“There is no political opposition in Russia. Parties like the Liberal Democratic Party and the Communist Party are, in effect, sub-departments of United Russia, the ruling party. There is only one power vertical and everyone in politics is in it: some as a back-up plan, just in case, some because they expect preferential treatment. I don’t call myself an opposition. I am just a person of common sense. No one appointed me to my post, I was chosen by the majority in competitive elections. That is why I have more scope to act than government-backed officials. But where I can’t...

A report on Russia's role in the Ukraine conflict - compiled by the murdered Russian opposition politician, Boris Nemtsov - will be released in April, his colleague has told the BBC. Ilya Yashin said most of the material gathered by Mr Nemtsov had been retrieved, despite police searches of his apartment and offices.

Who knew Russia had such crack detectives — not just fast in their investigation of the murder of Nemtsov but practically clairvoyant… they ignored the possibility that Nemtsov’s conflict with the Kremlin had anything to do with the murder. And then there was the theory bizarre enough to make the victim’s friends do a double take: the sleuths suggested that some religious fanatic could have killed him for insulting Islam. Of all the powerful figures Nemtsov had opposed, insulted and tried to bring down to earth during his two decades in politics, the Prophet Mohammed was never one of them…...

MOSCOW—President Vladimir Putin gave an award to the governor of Chechnya, one day after the strongman leader of the Caucasus region hailed the accused killer of a prominent opposition leader as “a true patriot.” A Kremlin spokesman said Monday that the timing of Ramzan Kadyrov ’s award was coincidental...had been planned for months. But Kremlin critics saw the award as a sign of official endorsement of Mr. Kadyrov’s assertion that the accused killer of Boris Nemtsov was motivated by anger at the opposition politician’s comments in defense of the French cartoonists from Charlie Hebdowho were killed in January by Islamists...

GROZNY, Russia, March 8 (UPI) — The sixth suspect in last month’s killing of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov committed suicide by blowing himself up as police surrounded his apartment in the North Caucasus on Saturday. Beslan Shavanov, 30, {link:attempted to escape: “http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/07/europe/russia-nemtsov-murder-arrest/?iid=ob_article_organicsidebar_expansion&iref=obnetwork”,nw} his Grozny apartment by tossing a grenade at officers. He then blew himself up, according to Russian media.

Putin informed of arrests in opposition leader's slaying(CNN) —Russian authorities arrested two men Saturday in the killing of a leading opposition figure, Russian state media reported. Boris Nemtsov, one of President Vladimir Putin's most outspoken critics, was shot in the back on a Moscow bridge as he walked with his girlfriend near the Kremlin in late February.Surveillance video showed someone darting from the sidewalk and into a nearby car right after Nemtsov collapsed.Putin has been informed of the arrests in connection with Nemtsov's death, Russian media said, citing Federal Security Service director Alexander Bortnikov. The suspects are Anzor Gubashev and...

NICOSIA, Cyprus – Cyprus' president on Monday sharply rebuked the U.S. ambassador on the Mediterranean island for a tweet he claims linked his visit to Russia to the assassination of opposition figure Boris Nemtsov. Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades concluded a four-day visit to Russia on Feb. 28, hours after Nemtsov was killed. U.S. Ambassador John Koenig asked on Twitter: "What do people in #Cyprus think about the week in Russia as seen from here? Anastasiades visit and statements, #Nemtsov assassination?"

Boris Nemtsov's girlfriend has broken her public silence on the murder of the Russian opposition activist, saying she did not see the killer who gunned him down as they strolled across a bridge near the Kremlin. Speaking largely without emotion in deadened monosyllables, Ukrainian fashion model Anna Duritskaya said she had little recollection of what happened in the moments after Nemtsov was shot dead on Friday night.

Supporters of slaughtered Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov march in Moscow yesterday, Sunday 01 March 2015 (twitter) There is no need to discuss whether Vladimir Putin personally gave the order to kill Boris Nemtsov, or whether it was given by someone else in the Kremlin - either to make the boss happy or, conversely, to put yet another stain on his long-besmirched reputation. Or whether Nemtsov was shot by some "patriotic" right-wing ghoul, acting on his own. As deputy head of the Kremlin administration Vyacheslav Volodin declared last October, speaking at the Valdai discussion forum in Sochi: "Russia will endure only...

On Friday evening, Boris Nemtsov, a Russian opposition leader and former first deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin, went on a prominent Moscow radio station to exhort his fellow citizens to come out to protest President Vladimir Putin’s policies. There would be a rally on Sunday, a spring march, to demonstrate against the deepening economic crisis and Russia’s involvement in Ukraine. The most prominent Russian opposition leader, Aleksei Navalny, had been put in jail for 15 days, which just happened to be long enough to keep him from attending the rally. Nemtsov, who was older and, by now, less influential,...

The murder of Boris Nemtsov in broad daylight just outside the Kremlin confirms the worst fears about Russia under President Vladimir Putin. For a man like him, wealth and power leave no room for scruples. He is probably the world’s richest man, and he is ruthlessly extending the territory of Russia. Nemtsov publicized the country’s endemic corruption, and accused Putin of aggression against Ukraine. A fortnight ago, he was predicting that Putin would have him murdered. That’s the logic of systems of this kind. Putin’s message to Nemtsov’s aged mother reads in full, “Please accept my deepest condolences in connection...

Boris Nemtsov: The political demands [for our march] are key: a quick end to the war with Ukraine. You know that Putin began aggression a year ago against Ukraine? Why do I say a year ago? Because on Feb 27 last year you know that armed men seized the parliament building of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. Then 47 deputies without a quorum under the gaze of automatic weapons, voted for the referendum.

When reporters asked former world chess champion and Kremlin critic Garry Kasparov who was behind the assassination of opposition figure Boris Nemtsov, he dismissed the question as irrelevant. Whoever did the dirty work, he implied, would have done so only with President Vladimir Putin's blessing. "Who gave the order to kill Nemtsov? Who knows,” Kasparov said. ”But this was done not far from the Kremlin and it would have been done by Putin's cronies. Who ordered it? I don't care. Putin must be held responsible for the murder of Boris." Kasparov’s remark gets to the heart of the larger significance...

Nemtsov founded a number of opposition movements after leaving the Russian parliament in 2003 and he had served as the co-chair of the opposition Republican Party of Russia - People's Freedom Party since 2012. He was a prominent and vocal critic of Mr Putin, denouncing him for Russia's part in the Ukraine crisis, its worsening economic situation, and the alleged corruption surrounding preparations for the Sochi Olympic Games in 2014.

A top political nemesis of President Vladimir Putin was shot and killed early Saturday in central Moscow, Russian police said, one day before an opposition rally was scheduled to take place. Boris Nemtsov, 55, a former deputy prime minister, was shot four times from a passing car as he was walking on a bridge just outside the Kremlin. Interior Ministry spokeswoman Yelena Alexeyeva told reporters on the scene that Nemtsov was walking with a female acquaintance, a Ukrainian citizen, when a vehicle drove up and unidentified assailants shot him dead. The woman wasn't hurt.

Russian opposition politician and former deputy PM Boris Nemtsov shot dead on Moscow street - Russian media

Boris Nemtsov, a Russian opposition politician and former deputy prime minister, has been shot dead in central Moscow, the Interior Ministry said early on Saturday. Nemtsov, 55, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin, had been due to take part on Sunday in the first big opposition protest in months in the Russian capital. He was shot four times late on Friday night, not far from the Kremlin in the centre of Moscow. Police cars blocked the street where he was shot. An ambulance was also nearby. "Nemtsov B.E. died at 2340 hours as a result of four shots in...

MOSCOW — A prominent Russian opposition leader, Boris Y. Nemtsov, was shot dead in central Moscow late Friday night within sight of the Kremlin walls. The murder of Mr. Nemtsov, 55, a first deputy prime minister under Boris N. Yeltsin who later helped organize opposition demonstrations against President Vladimir V. Putin, was confirmed by Russia’s Interior Ministry shortly after 1 a.m. Saturday. A smooth-talking and worldly man who spoke accented but near-perfect English, Mr. Nemtsov rose to prominence as the governor of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast and became a vice premier in the late 1990s, during the last years of Mr....

U.S. President Barack Obama on Friday condemned the "brutal murder" of Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, and called for a full investigation into the killing. "The United States condemns the brutal murder of Boris Nemtsov, and we call upon the Russian government to conduct a prompt, impartial, and transparent investigation into the circumstances of his murder and ensure that those responsible for this vicious killing are brought to justice," Obama said in a statement.