His murder, two days before a planned opposition march, has also outraged fellow opposition figures and prompted a slew of speculation over who could be behind it.
Some government critics pointed fingers in the direction of President Vladimir Putin or one of his supporters. State media reported Nemtsov had received threats linked to his stance on the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris.
The Kremlin suggested Nemtsov may have been killed by enemies of Russia intent on creating political discord. The leader of Russia’s Communist Party similarly blamed anti-Russian “provocation,” according to the official news agency Tass.
So who was Boris Nemtsov? And how did he make so many enemies?
A Kremlin critic
Nemtsov, 55, was a top official with the Republican Party of Russia/Party of People’s Freedom, a liberal opposition group.
He had been arrested several times for speaking against Putin’s government. The most recent arrests were in 2011 when he protested the results of parliamentary elections and in 2012 when tens of thousands protested against Putin.
He had most recently been critical of the Kremlin’s handling of the Ukraine crisis.
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Nemtsov acknowledged in an interview with Russian newspaper Sobesednik this month that he was “a little bit” afraid that his mother’s fear — that Putin would have him killed — would come true.
But, he added, “I’m not afraid of him that much. If I was afraid I wouldn’t be heading an opposition party and do what I’m doing.”
Nemtsov’s lawyer Vadim Prokhorov told Russian media that Nemtsov’s life had been threatened on social media in recent weeks.
But he didn’t walk around with bodyguards, noted Julia Ioffe, a contributing writer to The New York Times Magazine who has covered Russian politics extensively.
“It was a very overt message of bravery,” Ioffe told CNN’s “AC360.”
“What we’ve seen in return is a very overt message of fear. People in the opposition will not believe anything that comes out of the Kremlin in terms of who did this. They perceive this as a message directly sent to them. When you see Boris Nemtsov’s body lying with the Kremlin as a backdrop, they understand that’s a message directed to them.”
In his final Newsweek interview, Nemtsov spoke of the need for “an alternative vision, a different idea of Russia. Our idea is the one of a democratic and open Russia. A country which is not applying bandit methods to its own citizens and neighbors.”
CNN’s Alla Eshchenko, Frederik Pleitgen, Steve Almasy and Brian Walker contributed to this report.
