Glam Miss Ukraine finalist was sole witness to chilling

murder of Putin's greatest rival

dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/glam-miss-ukraine-finalist-sole-26457004

13 March 2022

Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was once seen as a natural successor to Boris
Yeltsin, but his opposition to Russia's oligarchs and his support for an independent
Ukraine made him a threat to Putin

Duritska said she gave all the information she could to investigators but that they still tried to prevent
her from leaving Russia 'for her security'

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Russian leader Vladimir Putin shows zero tolerance for his opponents.

Just this week he authorised a brutal crackdown on protests against the Ukrainan
invasion in the streets of Moscow.

High-profile critics such as Alexander Litvinenko and Alexei Navalny have been poisoned
by Putin’s henchmen.

And Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was shot while walking across a bridge in
Moscow not far from the Kremlin in February 2015.

He died hours after publicly expressing his support for a march against Russian
aggression in Ukraine.

Officially, the crime remains unsolved.

The only witness to the shocking incident was 23-year-old Ukrainian fashion model Anna
Durytska, who was Nemtsov’s girlfriend at the time.

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 Nemtsov, was gunned down close to midnight on February 27, 2015 in a heavily policed area just
yards from the Kremlin (Image: Reuters)

Durytska saw little of the attack, in which Nemtsov was shot several times from a passing
car.

"I don't know where [the shooter] came from, but he was behind," she said.

"I didn't see the man. I turned round and all I saw was a light-coloured car. I I didn’t have
item to see the make of the car nor its license plate as it was driving away."

Still, efforts were made to ensure she didn’t testify.

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 A Pro-Putin news agency published what it called 'erotic' photos of the model in hope of
discrediting her testimony (Image: Life; east2west news)

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Immediately after the murder, Durytska was held under house arrest by Russian police,
and Pro-Putin news agencies leaked "spicy" and "erotic lingerie photos of the former
beauty queen in a bid to discredit her.

Propagada chiefs loyal to Putin also planted stories that Nemtsov had flown Durytska to a
Swiss clinic for an abortion to smear their reputations.

Durytska flew to Kyiv shortly after being released by the Russian authorities, and refused
to return to Moscow to answer further questions.

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 A Russian news website claimed that Nemtsov's murder was the work of the Ukraine security
services and accused Duritskaya of being their agent (Image: east2west news)

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Her lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov, said his client had been left "emotionally drained" by
hours of questioning from the Russian authorities.

"She has given a full and exhaustive account of her last hours with Boris," Prokhorov said.
"If any further investigative action is required, she has promised - something she has done
publicly - that she will cooperate. The main thing is that the guilty parties be tracked
down."

An official announcement from The Kremlin said that Putin was “determined” to find
Nemtsov’s killer, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said publicly that the
"heinous crime" would be "fully investigated."

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 Nemtsov was a fierce opponent of Putin's policies (Image: AFP/Getty Images)

Read More

A fortnight after the assassination, Russian authorities arrested two men in connection
with the crime.

One of them, Zaur Dadaev, confessed while in custody but later retracted his confession,
claiming that he had only said he was guilty because he was being tortured.

Three more suspects were arrested around the same time and, according to Russian
media reports, another suspect blew himself blew himself up with a hand grenade when
Russian police forces surrounded this flat in Grozny.

One of the suspects, Anzor Gubashev, claimed that Duritskaya was herself involved in the
assassination plot.

"It is clear that Duritskaya knew perfectly where to take Nemtsov at a certain time," he
alleged. "Everything was planned.'

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The model has refused to speak about Nemtsov's death, giving just one interview to Russian TV in
the days after he was shot (Image: east2west news)

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Just before his murder, Nemtsov had predicted that the deal between Putin and Chechen
warlord Ramzan Kadyrov would collapse, endangering Putin’ rule.: "The contract between
Kadyrov and Putin—money in exchange for loyalty—is coming to an end.

"Where will Mr Kadyrov's 20,000 men go?" he asked. "What will they demand? How will
they act? When will they come to Moscow?”.

He was also a fierce critic of Russia ’s intervention in Ukraine and the 2014 annexation of
the Crimean Peninsula.

Well-wishers laid flowers at the site where the opposition leader was shot – but police removed
them (Image: AFP/Getty Images)

Ben Judah, author of the book Fragile Empire which analyses Putin’s régime, says that
even if Putin didn’t personally authorise the killing he must have known who was
responsible.

"Nothing Boris Nemtsov did was not bugged, tailed, filmed or monitored by the secret
police," he wrote. "It is quite simply impossible that this man could have been shot dead
without the Kremlin knowing there was a plot afoot to kill him.

Even in death, Nemstov isn’t free from harassment from Putin’s minions. Moscow police
have repeatedly removed flowers placed on the former opposition leader’s grave by well-
wishers.

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