New York Times – by NEIL MacFARQUHAR
MOSCOW — Two suspects have been detained in the killing of the opposition leader Boris Y. Nemtsov, the head of Russia’s internal law enforcement agency announced on Saturday.
Alexander Bortnikov, the director of the Federal Security Service, known as the F.S.B., named the two suspects as Anzor Kubashev and Zaur Dadayev and said the men were residents of the southern Caucasus, state-run television reported.
Mr. Bortnikov provided no other details, other than to say the investigation was continuing as a joint operation of his agency, the interior ministry and the prosecutor’s office.
But an unidentified source told the Interfax news agency that the police had been able to trace the men both through cellphone activity around the location of the killing and from DNA testing of evidence found in the suspected getaway car. The Interfax report said that although the two men were the suspects in carrying out the killing, the people who organized it have yet to be identified.
Mr. Nemtsov was the victim of a brazen shooting in downtown Moscow late on Feb. 27. His proximity to the Kremlin, one of the most heavily guarded areas in Moscow, led some opposition figures to accuse the government of complicity in the crime.
An outspoken critic of the Russian government, Mr. Nemtsov was shot in the back by a man who had been hiding on a staircase leading up to the bridge across the Moscow River, according to police accounts. After shooting Mr. Nemtsov at least four times in the back, the shooter fled in a light-colored car driven by someone else.
Interfax quoted an unidentified law enforcement source as saying the vehicle was found quickly. Investigators also got clear pictures of the suspects from cameras on the bridge, the report said. However, there have been confused reports all week in Russia about whether the cameras were actually working and what they were able to capture. Finally, cellphone conversations helped lead to the suspects, Interfax reported.
The two men have yet to be arraigned, which may happen as early as Sunday, according to Russian press reports.
Mikhail Fedotov, the head of President Vladimir V. Putin‘s human rights council, was quoted as saying he hoped law enforcement officials would ultimately identify both the killers and those behind the crime.
“Certainly, it is important to find both those who committed and those who ordered this brazen and cynical crime,” Interfax quoted him as saying.
Ilya Yashin, a political ally of Mr. Nemtsov, expressed the widespread skepticism among activists that this case would prove any different from previous murders in which those responsible were never identified. Given the lack of significant details, “it is hard to judge whether these are the real perpetrators or whether the investigation went down the wrong track,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
Mr. Yashin called on the authorities to release any substantial evidence they had, such as pictures from the security cameras, so the public would know that the case was real. More important, he said, the authorities had to identify not just the perpetrators, but whoever was behind them.
It is not uncommon in high-profile cases to detain the perpetrators, which allows the authorities to present a good picture on television, he said. “But if whoever ordered it can avoid responsibility, then the practice of political assassinations will no doubt continue,” he added.
There have been a series of high-profile murders of government critics in Russia over the past two decades in which the mastermind has never been identified.
Last June, for example, Moscow’s highest criminal court sentenced five men, all from the North Caucasus, to prison for the 2006 murder of the investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya. But her supporters stress that the question of who ordered her killing remains open.
Ms. Politkovskaya was a scathing critic of Kremlin policies in the troubled southern Russian republic of Chechnya and of the local strongman, Ramzan A. Kadyrov.
The names of the two suspects in the Nemtsov case seem to indicate that they are from Chechnya, where Russia has been fighting insurgents on and off for centuries.
After two bloody wars in the 1990s, which leveled the capital, Grozny, Mr. Putin essentially subcontracted control over Chechnya to Mr. Kadyrov.
In recent weeks, Mr. Kadyrov and his supporters assumed a highly visible role in the anti-Maidan movement that seeks to block any attempt to recreate in Russia the kind of political upheaval that forced a change in government in neighboring Ukraine. More broadly, anti-Maidan figures support the conservative, nationalistic, anti-Western ideology that Mr. Putin has made a signature of his third term.
In a large march through central Moscow on Feb. 21, young supporters of Mr. Kadyrov carried signs saying “Putin and Kadyrov will prevent Maidan in Russia” and “It’s the enemies of Russia who want Maidan.”
Other signs singled out Mr. Nemtsov and Alexei Navalny, another charismatic opposition leader, as organizers of the Maidan movement in Russia. State television has also repeatedly attacked them as “enemies of the people” and members of a “fifth column” working for Western powers.
Opposition members maintain that this yearlong campaign created a climate of hate that led to Mr. Nemtsov’s killing.
Leaders of the anti-Maidan movement have denied any role, saying the assassination was likely plotted abroad. Mr. Kadyrov has said he suspected Western intelligence agencies intent on destabilizing Russia of killing Mr. Nemtsov.