Boris Nemtsov: Assassinated Putin Rival Was “Followed” By Agent Linked To FSB Execution Group

Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsovkilled in 2015, was followed for almost a year by an agent linked to a task force dedicated to the assassination of politicians, a new investigation reveals.

Nemtsov was a fierce opponent of Vladimir Putin and his death was the most relevant political crime since the Russian president came to power.

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Russian authorities have denied any link to the murder.

Bellingcat, The Insider and the BBC found evidence that the victim had been closely followed. on 13 trips prior to his assassination.

The crime

Boris Nemtsov became a prominent figure on the political spectrum in the 1990s, when he held the position of deputy prime minister under the presidency of Boris Yeltsin.

He was widely considered Yeltsin’s successor, but Putin came to power and Nemtsov was pushed to the fringes of Russian politics.

He then became a active anti-corruption militant and in 2014 he denounced Russian attacks in eastern Ukraine.

on 27 February 2015, Nemtsov was shot just meters from the Kremlindays before leading an anti-war protest.

Five men of Chechen origin were quickly arrested and convicted of her murder.

However, the official investigation left the most relevant questions unanswered: who ordered the murder and why?

The flight and train reservations used by Nemtsov were recorded in a database called Magistral. (GETTY IMAGES).

Seven years later, the BBC – in conjunction with the investigative portals Gellingcat and The Insider – reveals evidence that in the months before the murder, Nemtsov was followed through Russia by a government agent linked to a secret group in charge of political crimes.

Using leaked information from reservations made on trains and planes, the investigation shows that the opposition politician was followed on at least 13 trips.

“Masterly”

The last time this agent followed Nemtsov was on February 17, 2015, just 10 days before the murder.

According to these documents, the name of the agent is Valery Sukharev. All evidence suggests that at that time he worked for the FSB, the main Russian security agency.

One of the tasks of FSB is to counter domestic political threats on behalf of the Kremlin, including monitoring people’s movements across the country.

All flight and train reservations are recorded in a FSB database called Magistral. But this database doesn’t just capture the movements of people the agents can track, it can also be used to reveal the movements of these same agents, people like Sukharev.

This kind of information is usually leak onto the black market and end up in the hands of journalists.

“In a corrupt society like Russia’s, [Magistral] it’s a double-edged sword,” says Christo Grozev, CEO of Bellingcat, adding: “It allows people like us to go and track down those same spies, the FSB agents.”

Some of the original data for this investigation was purchased by Bellingcat through dealers in the interior of the country. Those dealers acquired the information from corrupt officials who have access to Magistral.

The The BBC also used information provided to it, without payment.,by sources who have access to copies of Magistral.

Follow-up

Bellingcat has previously used information from Magistral to investigate assassination attempts in Russia. These investigations revealed evidence pointing to the existence of a secret group of executors within the FSB, whose targets are opponents of the Kremlin.

The Russian government has always denied these accusations.

For this research, we analyzed the train and plane reservations made by Sukharev and, when compared with the movements of Boris Nemtsov, a clear pattern emerges.

Most of Nemtsov’s travels took him from Moscow, where he lived, to Yaroslavl (272 kilometers northeast of the capital) where he held a seat in the regional parliament.

It seems that Sukharev knew about Nemtsov’s plans in advance, because he used to arrive in the same city minutes or even hours before the politician.

One trip in particular reveals just how close the follow-up was.

In the summer of 2014, Nemtsov traveled to Siberia. He booked his flight online on July 2 after midnight. Exactly 10 minutes later, Sukharev bought a ticket to the same address,Novosibirsk, arriving the same day as Nemtsov.

Valery Sukharev was part of the team that traveled to the Russian city of Kazan.

FSB agents can use Magistral to track a target with that level of precision, says Grozev.

“If you are an agent of the FSB, you can enter the database and see all the tickets that a person has purchased and those that are buying at that very moment.”

The poison squad

It is not unusual in Russia for security agencies monitor the activities of the most important opposition leaders.

But Sukharev was not a low-ranking FSB agent going about his routine job.

Bellingcat, in previous investigations, has linked him to two apparent assassination attempts, both targeting prominent critics of Putin.

The first was Vladimir Kara-Murza, friend and protégé of Nemtsovwho in the weeks after the February 2015 assassination blamed the Kremlin for what happened.

In May 2015, Sukharev was part of a team that traveled to the Russian city of Kazan at the same time as Kara-Murza.

Two days after returning to Moscow, the politician collapsed and fell into a coma. Despite suffering from multiple failures in his body, he recovered.

Kara-Murza was poisoned a second time in 2017, and again survived.

The Russian government has denied that its agents were involved in poisonings.

The second objective was Alexei Navalnythe currently imprisoned opposition leader whose anti-corruption videos have been viewed by millions of Russians.

In 2020, Navalny was poisoned with novichok,a nerve agent developed by the Soviet Union and banned by international law.

Bellingcat established that an FSB team tracked Navalny to the eastern city of Tomsk immediately before the poisoning.

Sukharev was not part of the team physically following Navalny, but phone records reveal that, in the months leading up to the poisoning, Sukharev exchanged 155 calls or messages with at least four members of that group, as well as the FSB official above him. in the chain of command.

Four of those men were among the seven agents sanctioned by the US and UK governments for his involvement in the assassination attempt.

The Russian government has always denied any connection to Navalny’s poisoning.

The The BBC has consulted with the Russian government and the FSB about the evidence that Nemtsov was being followed by an agent linked to this task force..

Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov said “all this has nothing to do with the Russian government, it looks like another fabrication.”

The FSB did not respond.

Research: Christo Grozev, Yordan Tsalov, Roman Dobrokhotov

Documentary production: Aliaume Leroy, Antoine Schirer, Bertram Hill, Charlotte Pamment.

Executive Producer: Daniel Adamson

Source: Elcomercio