Do you know where Moscow’s CCTV cameras are? Neither do I. And, when it comes to surveillance cameras around the Kremlin, neither do the Muscovites, including those who live in the area.
However, they know there are lots of such cameras, keeping a watchful eye on one of the world’s most tightly guarded areas.
It’s not just the cameras either. The area around the Kremlin is crawling with trained FSB killers, there to make sure that nothing disturbs the daily toil of the Kremlin’s residents.
Hence a professional hitman would be unlikely to choose Red Square and vicinity as an arena for plying his trade.
Unlike a murderous fanatic who doesn’t fear, and may even welcome, death, a professional who is paid a lot of money wants to live to spend it. Obviously in his occupation he has to accept some risks, but a suicide mission isn’t for him.
If he takes a job, he has to be reasonably sure that, mission accomplished, he’ll walk away unscathed.
That means not being shot or arrested on the spot, and also not being caught on camera. Ideally there shouldn’t be many potential eyewitnesses either.
At 11.30 at night this last condition would have been the only one met by the southern approach to Red Square. Unlike the northern approach, it’s seldom overcrowded even in daytime, and but a handful of pedestrians grace it by their presence at night.
The other two conditions, however, would stack the odds against any assassin to the point of being suicidally prohibitive. And yet Nemtsov’s murderer bucked the odds: having fired his unsilenced pistol six times, he wasn’t caught on camera, and none of the security personnel present even gave chase when he fled.
How did he get away with the murder? And why did he choose such an unlikely ground?
After all, Nemtsov was out and about all day and, from the assassin’s standpoint, just about any other place in Moscow would have been more secure than the 100 yards separating the northern end of the Trans-Moskva Bridge from the southern end of Red Square.
Yet in an ideal world, with no cameras or cops present, this choice of murder site sends a powerful message, especially if the victim’s body is left on the pavement for three hours, as Nemtsov’s body was.
Hence the murderer had to be sure the site was indeed ideal, and he had nothing to fear from either the cameras or the heavily armed FSB chaps who at that time of night would have outnumbered pedestrians two to one.
His calculations were proved to be spectacularly accurate. He got away without even leaving an identifiable photographic memento behind.
This brings us to the mysterious snowplough, never mentioned in the initial police reports and only uncovered when the CCTV footage had to be made available to the public.
But before we talk about the snowplough, let’s talk about the car, from which the assassin allegedly fired and in which he got away.
That he got away in it is beyond doubt, but the footage clearly shows he didn’t fire from it. He was on foot, conveniently shielded from the camera’s prying eye by the snowplough whose speed was adjusted to the assassin’s walking pace.
Conceivably the murderer even arrived in the snowplough, getting out only to pull the trigger and then to jump into the getaway car.
Now the car was moving in parallel with the snowplough and at exactly the same crawling speed. Hence the larger vehicle obscured it too, until the moment the assassin’s job had been done.
Casting aside not just improbable but impossible coincidences, the whole operation shows every sign of being timed, orchestrated and executed with uncanny professional precision.
This means, among other things, that – unlike you, me and most Muscovites – the organisers and perpetrators of the crime knew exactly which camera covered the site, at what angle of vision, and how it could be blocked.
Such foreknowledge raises quite a few questions:
What happened to the snowplough afterwards? Has anyone interrogated the driver? How come a car crawling along at the snail’s pace of the snowplough and in parallel with it didn’t attract the attention of the security personnel? How come they didn’t pursue the getaway car?
That this was a professional hit is beyond doubt. The assassin used a short-barrelled 9mm Makarov pistol, designed as an improvement on the German wartime Walther PP.
While accurate by the standards of its weapon category, the Makarov wouldn’t be the first choice of weapon for a professional hit. Its rather heavy calibre and short barrel would make it inaccurate in any other than extremely well-trained hands.
The assassin’s hands satisfied that requirement. He managed to connect with four out of six shots – without hitting Nemtsov’s young girlfriend with whom he was walking hand in hand.
Even at close range this is extremely good going, especially under pressure. The assassin had to be absolutely confident he wouldn’t miss, in which case the 9mm rounds would have plenty of killing power.
One would think that the case is full of paradoxes. On the one hand, the assassin and his accomplices were consummate professionals able to plan the hit meticulously and execute it dispassionately and efficiently.
On the other hand, they chose a killing site that offered maximum PR value but practically no chance of escaping. Every hallmark of a suicidal mission was present, and yet the assassin(s) took it on.
There is only one way out of this paradox:
The assassin(s) knew exactly where the relevant camera was; they knew how to render it useless; they knew how to get hold of a snowplough; they knew the FSB security would be temporarily as unsighted as the camera; they knew neither they nor the snowplough driver would be pursued; they knew that, even if the snowplough driver is interrogated, he’ll be able to claim complete innocence credibly and in any case won’t identify the murderer.
Such knowledge couldn’t have been acquired without the direct involvement of the security services, or at least their acquiescence.
And security services wouldn’t have taken it upon themselves to take part in the murder of one of Russia’s best-known politicians without either a direct order or at least a transparent hint from the Kremlin.
Thus if anyone harbours any doubts that Putin is a serial murderer, this case ought to dispel them. The murder of Boris Nemtsov isn’t the first on Putin’s score sheet and, one fears, it’s far – very far – from being the last.