Boris Nemtsov murder witness says she is blocked from leaving Russia
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They met three years ago, by some accounts on holiday in Turkey, and soon enough became a couple.
Though she was less than half his age, Anna Duritskaya, a Ukrainian model, was often with Boris Nemtsov, a beleaguered Russian opposition leader, including on Friday evening, when a gunman carried out the highest-profile political assassination in Russia during the tenure of President Vladimir Putin.
Slain Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov's companion Anna Duritskaya tells a Russian TV station she is being held against her will by Russian investigators. Photo: Reuters
Duritskaya is now a primary witness to the shooting. In interviews with Russian news media on Monday, Duritskaya said the Russian police were not allowing her to return to Ukraine, though they had not formally detained her.
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Her uncertain status has drawn objections from Ukraine's Foreign Ministry and her Russian lawyer, who has said the action has no legal basis under Russian law. The development comes in a case that Western officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, have implored Russia to solve swiftly and openly. The Kremlin had no official comment on Monday.
Duritskaya, 23, said in a Skype and telephone interview with Dozhd, a Russian television station, that she was staying at the apartment of an acquaintance in Moscow and had been placed under round-the-clock guard by the police, who she said were holding her against her will.
Boris Nemtsov was gunned down on Friday evening a he walked with Anna Duritskaya. Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
"I now have the status of a witness," Duritskaya said. "I gave all testimony that was possible, and I don't understand why I am still on the territory of the Russian Federation, as I want to leave to be with my mother, who is sick and in a difficult psychological state."
"I don't understand what else I can do, and why they cannot let me go," she added.
Duritskaya said she waited on Friday evening in the Bosco cafe in the GUM department store on Red Square for Nemtsov to finish an interview on the Echo of Moscow radio station. The two had dinner and then started the walk home.
People march in memory of Russian opposition leader and former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov in central Moscow. Photo: Getty Images
At no point, she said, did she notice anything suspicious, and she suggested that she had little to help investigators, because the gunman had shot Nemtsov in the back as the couple walked side by side.
Nemtsov, 55, a long-standing proponent of democratic reforms who had been in and out of jail, crumpled on the sidewalk. By the time she looked back, she said, she saw neither the gunman's face, nor the licence plate of the getaway car. She ran to a nearby snowplow machine, she said, to ask for help, then returned to the body and waited, by her account, about 10 minutes for the police to arrive.
The relationship of the older, famous politician and the young model from a country many Russians now believe to be their enemy has drawn intense interest from Russia's tabloid press.
The Investigative Committee, the law enforcement organisation with the lead on the case, has said it is examining a variety of possible motives for the murder, including that fellow members of the opposition killed him to create a martyr and that Islamist terrorists might be to blame, but that conflicts in his personal life might be the root.
More than a few Russian commentators and politicians floated the idea of jealousy. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the Russian nationalist politician, for example, said of Nemtsov's romantic life, "This young girl was not the first." Zhirinvosky said his former colleague in Parliament "was always changing his partners, changing wives."
Duritskaya, in the interview, denied that either of them had received threats from jealous former lovers.
Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, citing investigators, reported that Duritskaya had "forgotten" crucial moments of the shooting on a bridge over the Moscow River, and cited unnamed experts saying that investigators might have to wait until she underwent a course of psychological treatment, to overcome shock.
Asked in the Dozhd interview what had happened on the bridge, Duritskaya said flatly "on the bridge, the murder of Boris took place."
She told the Russian television channel that the investigators had not prohibited her from talking about the killing, though it remained an open question whether she might speak more freely about the shooting once outside the country.
Her lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov, has said that the refusal to allow Duritskaya to return home to Ukraine violated Russian law, as his client had declined a program for witness protection and could not be held under other pretexts.
LifeNews, one Russian television station that has delved into the relationship, interviewed a friend of Duritskaya's, who said the couple "were really tied by genuine feelings."
"They started to live together almost immediately," the station cited the friend, identified only by her first name, Yulia, as saying. "The couple was almost never apart."
Nemtsov, a physicist turned politician, was separated from his wife and children, and his career had fallen precipitously from the days when he was seen as a successor to Boris Yeltsin to be leader of Russia.
But he was still a witty and driven and admired man, with a politician's charm. He was killed just days before he was to lead a rally to protest the war in Ukraine.
Duritskaya was a provincial girl who found some success in the Ukrainian capital, working for the agencies Amodels and Kiev-Casting, appearing in advertisements available online.
When war came to their countries, Nemtsov met with the Ukrainian president, Petro O. Poroshenko, who later said he had tried to be a "bridge" between the two nations in conflict.
On Monday, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry issued a statement calling on the Russian authorities to release Duritskaya and allow the return "of this citizen of Ukraine to her homeland."
The New York Times
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