What impact will Nemtsov’s death have on Russian opposition?

Boris Nemtsov.(RIA Novosti / Alexander Makarov)

Opposition figure Boris Nemtsov was killed in Moscow on Saturday night. RT sat down with analyst Dmitry Babich, who knew Nemtsov personally, to discuss the possible impact of the murder on the Russian opposition.

RT: Boris Nemtsov’s political prominence
plays back to the 1990s…Was he in any way significant today to
the Kremlin, as has been claimed by some Western media?

Dmitry Babich: No, I don’t think he was
dangerous to the Kremlin politically, because his electoral
support was very low. The last election that his party – the
Union of Right Forces – the last election that they actually
managed to show good results at was in 2001. In 2001, his party
got about 10 percent of the vote. Since then, he never managed to
pass the threshold of five percent. So electorally, he wasn’t
strong. But, certainly, he represented a certain minority view in
Russia and especially on the events in Ukraine. He full-heartedly
supported the new regime in Kiev.

RT: The Russian opposition has been noted
for not being united and not offering people something to go
with. Is his death likely to unite or spread further the
opposition here in Russia?

READ MORE: Boris Nemtsov: From reformist wonder
boy to disgruntled opposition leader

DB: Well, in the short run, of course, the
opposition – especially the liberal opposition – will be buoyed
by this death, so they will present him as a victim, as someone
whom the Kremlin feared. But in the long run, I don’t think his
death will have a strong impact on the opposition. The main
problem of the liberal opposition is not it’s being divided; its
problem is that they are trying to unite around wrong ideas.
Right now, the reliant point of the liberal opposition is support
for the new regime in Kiev.

A certain minority in Russia may be sympathetic with that view,
but certainly not the huge majority of Russians.

RT: The timing of his death comes during the
very fragile – but ongoing – ceasefire in Ukraine that’s been
going on for two weeks…

DB:
Well, that’s true. In general, I think his death is a tragedy for
all Russians, even those who disagreed with him. First he was a
very nice and friendly person. I, as a journalist, took a lot of
interviews from him and I remember that he was one of the few
politicians who actually befriended journalists. He changed his
views. I would say that, for example, he was very much against
the NATO strike against Yugoslavia in 1999. Now, you know, in the
last few years he suddenly started to support new Ukraine. So, he
was not always consequential; he was not always logical. But
thanks to television, he became almost like a member of the
family, you know, for a lot of Russians who watched him on
television during all of the 1990s. So his death is, of course, a
very, very bad blow to all of Russia.

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