Russia convicts Boris Nemtsov’s killers, but the organisers are still unknown

IN LATE 2014, Boris Nemtsov, a Russian opposition leader, wondered aloud about the consequences of allowing the head of the Chechen republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, to amass his own armed forces. “The contract between Kadyrov and Putin—money in exchange for loyalty—is ending. Where will Mr Kadyrov’s 20,000 men go?” he wrote. “When will they come to Moscow?” Just a few months later, Nemtsov was gunned down while walking with his girlfriend across a bridge in the shadow of the Kremlin. The killing rattled the Russian political world and horrified the liberal opposition that looked up to Nemtsov, a charismatic former deputy prime minister who had once seemed destined for the presidency.

On June 29th, after three days of jury deliberations, a Russian court convicted five Chechen men in connection with the assassination. Yet for Nemtsov’s supporters, the verdict brought little solace. Those convicted may have carried out the killing, but the Russian state has proved unwilling to pursue those who ordered or organised it. “This was not a full-fledged investigation, but an imitation,” wrote Nemtsov’s daughter, Zhanna Nemtsova. Nemtsov’s associates believe the trail of responsibility leads to the highest levels of the Chechen leadership.

Over the course of eight months, the jury heard the grim tale of a contract killing. The ringleader, Zaur Dadayev, a former high-ranking soldier in a Chechen battalion, allegedly accepted 15m roubles ($253,000) from Ruslan Mukhudinov, the driver of a senior Chechen military officer, to kill Nemtsov. Yet the prosecutors failed to probe Mr Mukhudinov’s possible motive or means for financing the operation. He has since fled the country. His boss, Ruslan Geremeyev, was never questioned, nor were other high-ranking Chechen officials.

Nemtsov’s killing highlighted the Faustian bargain the Kremlin has made with Mr Kadyrov. In exchange for loyalty and ensuring stability in the republic, where Russia has fought two bloody wars since the early 1990s, Mr Kadyrov has been given licence and funding to run it as his personal fief. He has his own army and imposes his own religious laws. While the assassination of Nemtsov reportedly strained Mr Kadyrov’s relationship with Vladimir Putin, the Kremlin awarded him a medal shortly afterward, and has done little to restrain him since. Following Mr Dadayev’s arrest in 2015, an unchastened Mr Kadyrov praised him as a “true Russian patriot”. Earlier this year, human-rights activists reported that Mr Kadyrov’s security forces were arresting and torturing gay men in secret prisons. Mr Kadyrov retorted, preposterously, that there are no gay men in Chechnya.

Russia’s Investigative Committee says it will continue to hunt the organisers. Yet if other politicised murders linked to Chechnya, such as the killing of the journalist Anna Politikovskaya in 2006, are any indication, Nemtsov’s true killers are unlikely to face justice. Instead of pursuing them, the Kremlin has played down Nemtsov’s importance, and Moscow city authorities have repeatedly destroyed a makeshift memorial that supporters built on the bridge where Nemstov was killed. The day after the verdict, however, fresh flowers—red roses and white lilies— stood there beside Nemtsov’s portraits. Tamara Lugovykh, a volunteer watching over the memorial early Friday morning found little reason to celebrate the verdict. “The organisers remain out of reach,” she said. “It raises the question: Is Chechnya part of Russia, or Russia part of Chechnya?”