Nemtsov’s Death No Accident, Comrade

The assassination outside the Kremlin last week of Vladimir Putin’s most prominent and effective critic was, as the communists used to say, “no accident, comrade.” Boris Nemtsov was reportedly about to disclose proof that the Putin regime was engineering the violence in Ukraine.

To be sure, this is not exactly news. The Ukrainians and the West have contended that Putin was responsible ever since so-called “separatists” engineered Crimea’s take-over and annexation by Russia. Still, the prospect of Nemstov courageously marshaling the evidence of Kremlin complicity, given his stature as a former Russian Deputy Prime Minister, evidently was seen as intolerable by Putin’s friends.

Such a conclusion seems inescapable since Vladimir Putin has announced that he will personally oversee the investigation into the Nemstov assassination. That should ensure the perpetrators are never found.