Russian opposition politician shot dead in Moscow

Boris Nemtsov, a leading Russian opposition politician and former Deputy Prime Minister has been shot dead in Moscow.

Russian police said that an unidentified attacker shot Nemtsov four times in the back as he crossed Moskvoretsky Bridge in view of the Kremlin, hours after appealing for support for a march in Moscow against the war in Ukraine.

According to Russian news website Meduza, "several people" got out of the car and shot him.

In a statement, Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the killing and assumed “personal control” of the investigations.

“It bears the hallmarks of a contract killing,” Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

US President Barack Obama also condemned the "brutal murder" and called on Russia to conduct a "prompt, impartial and transparent investigation".

The secretary general of the Council of Europe said that he was “appalled” by the killing.

“Killers must be brought to justice,” Thorbjorn Jagland said in a tweet.

Nemtsov served as deputy prime minister under President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s. He later earned renown as a vocal critic of Putin.

In a recent interview, Nemtsov said that he feared Putin would have him killed because of his opposition to Russia’s role in the Ukraine war.

"I'm afraid Putin will kill me," he said "I believe that he was the one who unleashed the war in the Ukraine. I couldn't dislike him more."

However, Putin’s spokesman insisted that Nemtsov hadn’t posed a threat to the current Russian government.

“With all due respect to the memory of Boris Nemtsov, in political terms he did not pose any threat to the current Russian leadership or Vladimir Putin,” Peskov said. “If we compare popularity levels, Putin’s and the government’s ratings and so on, in general Boris Nemtsov was just a little bit more than an average citizen.”