Five Men Who Killed Putin Foe Boris Nemtsov Are Sentenced in Russia<br />Investigators and allies of Mr. Nemtsov have long suspected<br />that Mr. Kadyrov may have been involved in the killing, but it remains unclear why he might have wanted Mr. Nemtsov dead.<br />Mr. Dadayev, who served as an officer in the security services of the Kremlin-backed Chechen leader, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, may have been the one who fatally shot Mr. Nemtsov, but the politician’s family and his supporters contend<br />that the people who ordered the killing remain at large.<br />The shooting of Mr. Nemtsov, a charismatic opposition leader who antagonized the Kremlin, ended his two-decade democratic crusade<br />that began in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, and continued through the authoritarian rise of Mr. Putin.<br />His efforts drew the ire of Putin loyalists: The state-controlled news media<br />and Kremlin supporters called Mr. Nemtsov corrupt and a traitor, and spread propaganda to undermine his popular appeal.<br />Shortly before midnight on Feb. 27, 2015, the opposition leader Boris Y. Nemtsov was gunned down a few steps away from the Kremlin as he<br />and his girlfriend were walking home across a bridge from Red Square.<br />Others have said he wanted to help his patron, Mr. Putin, by eliminating one of the<br />Russian leader’s harshest critics, even though the killing embarrassed the Kremlin.
