(New York Times) About two weeks before he was shot and killed in the highest-profile political assassination in Russia in a decade, Boris Nemtsov met with an old friend to discuss his latest research into what he said was dissembling and misdeeds in the Kremlin.
He was pugilistic and excited, saying he wanted to publish the research in a pamphlet to be called "Putin and the War," about President Vladimir Putin and Russian involvement in the Ukraine conflict, recalled Yevgenia Albats, the editor of the New Times magazine. Both knew the stakes.
Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister, knew his work was dangerous but tried to convince her that, as a former high official in the Kremlin, he enjoyed immunity, Albats said.