Those who ordered Nemtsov's murder remain unnamed for 11 years.

The murder of Boris Nemtsov on February 27, 2015, could not have been the initiative of the perpetrators, and Chechen security forces were not involved in this crime at the "own request" of Ramzan Kadyrov, the former Russian Deputy Prime Minister is certain. For 11 years, the investigation has not named those who ordered the politician's murder.

As "Caucasian Knot" reported a year earlier, on the tenth anniversary of the murder of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, it became known that a Chechen native, Abdul Elmurzaev, who had been stalking Nemtsov before the murder, had been placed on the wanted list. The documents indicate that Elmurzaev is wanted under a criminal statute, without specifying the charges.

On the eve of the 11th anniversary of the crime, former Russian Deputy Prime Minister (March - August 1997) Alfred Kokh* shared his thoughts on the probable mastermind behind Boris Nemtsov's murder. In an interview with Yuri Dud*, he recalled that Vladimir Putin presented an order to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov shortly after the politician's murder.

Koch* expressed confidence that the crime could not have been the perpetrators' initiative, recalling details: CCTV cameras in the area of ​​the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky Bridge were turned off on the day of the murder, there were no police officers nearby, and the view of the crime scene was blocked by utility vehicles. This, in his opinion, indicates that the murder was not organized at the "mid-level."

At the same time, Kokh* believes that Ramzan Kadyrov "would not have willingly" ordered Chechen security forces to kill Nemtsov, but he sought to please Vladimir Putin, even in the absence of a "formal order." The former Yeltsin official used a literary analogy to explain: "The Godfather never gave the order to kill anyone. He would say, 'It's impossible to negotiate with this person.' And everyone around him understood perfectly well what that meant," Kokh explained.

He also noted that Putin sent a letter of condolence to Boris Nemtsov's mother, addressing her by her maiden name (Eidman), even though Nemtsova was the official surname by which she was known for many decades after her marriage. Alfred Koch* believes this was a deliberately "mocking" gesture: he suggested that this reference to the murdered politician's Jewish origins was intended to diminish sympathy for him among some Russians.

One ​​of the first theories about Nemtsov's murder was that it was a political assassination aimed at eliminating a key opposition figure and intimidating the liberal public. Supporters of this theory alleged the involvement of Russian intelligence officers in the crime. Evidence supporting this theory included the fact that the murder was committed in close proximity to Red Square and the Moscow Kremlin—sites protected by the Federal Protective Service—and that it occurred on the eve of the "Spring" anti-crisis march, organized by Nemtsov himself. The march was ultimately canceled.

The second theory, about a Chechen connection, began to be voiced after the arrest of five ethnic Chechen suspects in the case in March 2016. According to investigators, the person directly responsible for Nemtsov's murder was Zaur Dadaev, a former fighter in the Chechen "Sever" battalion. Following Kadyrov's comments about the murder of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, as well as his assurances that Zaur Dadaev was a "true patriot of Russia" and a "deeply religious man," the theory that the assassination attempt may have been motivated by religious beliefs took hold in the public consciousness. In his autobiography, "Confessions of a Rebel," Nemtsov recounted that at his first meeting with Ramzan Kadyrov at the Congress of the Chechen People in 2002, the future head of Chechnya declared that Nemtsov should be killed for proposing "to eliminate the post of president and form a parliament, and then a government, implying some kind of compromise between various groups, including separatists." According to him, the Chechens nearby began to say that Ramzan was joking. "But I didn't see any joke in his eyes. I saw hatred in his eyes," Nemtsov wrote.

On December 11, 2020, at a closed meeting with human rights activists, Vladimir Putin stated that "in general, everything is clear, the perpetrators have been found, as well as those who ordered it." A year later, in December 2021, Putin promised that if those behind Nemtsov's murder, unknown to the investigation, were behind them, the search would continue.

* are listed as foreign agents.

** Meta (owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp) is banned in Russia.