By Vladimir Kara-Murza
Last week, the administrative office of the St. Petersburg city parliament called Boris Vishnevsky, one of its few opposition lawmakers, to say a letter had arrived for him from the Foreign Ministry in Moscow. He was told he would not be allowed to keep it; he could only read it at the office and return it straightaway. The letter was marked “for official use,” and Vishnevsky was warned not to publish or send it anywhere. “Fine, I am not sending it anywhere,” he responded. “But I am reporting its contents.”
The letter was a response to Vishnevsky’s inquiry to Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov about media reports that Emanuelis Zingeris, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s special rapporteur on the investigation into the murder of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, had been banned from entering Russia. The letter that Vishnevsky was allowed to see — but not keep — contained official confirmation from the Russian Foreign Ministry that it had indeed issued a travel ban against Zingeris, and that he would not be allowed to enter the country.
It would be difficult to think of a clearer message from the Russian authorities. The travel ban on the Council of Europe’s rapporteur caps years of Kremlin efforts to hinder any meaningful investigation into the most high-profile political assassination in modern Russia. More than three years after Nemtsov, the former deputy prime minister and Vladimir Putin’s most prominent opponent, was gunned down in sight of the Kremlin’s walls, none of the organizers or masterminds of his murder have been identified or brought to justice.
Perhaps the most glaring omission involves motive. The Russian authorities deliberately classified the assassination of Nemtsov — a former government minister and regional governor, a four-term member of Russia’s parliament and, at the time of the murder, a regional lawmaker and leader of a political party — under Criminal Code Article 105, on ordinary murder, instead of Article 277, which concerns an attack on “a statesman or public figure.” As state prosecutor Viktor Antipov told the court, “we cannot allow for the murders of opposition members to be handled under Article 277.” Throughout the trial, questions relating to political motives were repeatedly disallowed by the judge. “We saw a trial where it is forbidden to talk about substance,” wrote opposition lawmaker Lev Shlosberg. “The court is investigating a political assassination without any questions about politics.”
And so the Russian authorities have declared the Nemtsov case “solved” — though there has been no questioning of relevant suspects, no identification of motive, no investigation of the organizers or masterminds behind the killing. What the Kremlin wants now is to turn the page, forget and move on.
The Kremlin’s response, at least with regard to the Council of Europe, came in the letter to Vishnevsky. As special rapporteur with a mandate to review all aspects of the Nemtsov case, Zingeris was planning an evidence-gathering trip to Russia. But as the Foreign Ministry has made clear, the only officials he will be able to meet there will be the border guards at Sheremetyevo Airport, who will turn him back.
“It is scary to allow an independent investigation of Nemtsov’s murder. The true picture may emerge, the true organizers and masterminds may be named,” Vishnevsky wrote after reviewing the Foreign Ministry’s letter. “One can understand Russian officials and diplomats . . . But this cannot continue indefinitely. The truth will become known all the same.”