At a recent launch of the Anti-Maidan movement in Russia, the leader of a biker gang, known as “the Surgeon”, who has been photographed many times with Putin, said foreign powers were sharpening their teeth to attack Russia. The Anti-Maidan movement would ensure that they could not do so, with violence if necessary. Another name for the movement was “death to faggots”, said the Surgeon.
Nemtsov frequently appeared on lists of “traitors” published online by extremist groups, and given that many radical Russian nationalists have been fighting a war in east Ukraine for the past six months, there have long been fears that the bloodshed could at some point move to the streets of Moscow.
The well-organised hit, in one of the most closely watched parts of Moscow, of a man who was undoubtedly under state surveillance just two days before a major opposition march, does not smack of an amateur job. Assuming a jealous lover or angry fellow liberal would not be able to organise a drive-by shooting in the shadows of the Kremlin towers, the remaining options are disturbing.
If, as Peskov says, it was senseless for the Kremlin to kill someone who posed very little threat, that leaves another option that is perhaps even more terrifying: that the campaign of hate that has erupted over the past year is spiralling out of the control of those who manufactured it.
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