SOTT FOCUS: Insignificant 'Putin critic' gunned down by someone who hates Putin

Boris Nemtsov entering the US embassy in 2012

Boris Nemtsov was shot in the back last night as he walked with his Ukrainian girlfriend near the Kremlin in Moscow. Nemtsov ran unsuccessfully for office in 1989 before eventually being elected to Russia's parliament in 1990. As deputy minster for economic reform under Yeltsin, he failed to actually deliver economic reform amid the August 1998 economic crisis and it cost him his job.

In 1999 he founded the Union of Right Forces (SPS), along with fellow liberals Anatoly Chubais and Yegor Gaidar. The SPS was directly sponsored by the US government (via USAID) in 2002 after which it became openly critical of Russia's new President Putin (surprise!). This fact alone establishes Nemtsov and SPS as agents of Western efforts to destabilize Russia and therefore not representative of any significant section of the Russian people. Indeed, in the 2003 election, the SPS failed to reach even the 5% threshold needed to enter parliament.

Realising real politics wasn't for him, Nemtsov decided to try his hand at legalized money laundering banking, joining Neftyanoi Bank which, with Nemtsov as director, was investigated and shut down in 2005 for money laundering and fraud.

In 2004 he joined the Ukrainian government of Mr US-backed-Orange-revolution, Victor Yushenko as an economic adviser. He was kicked out of the job in 2006 because of complaints from cabinet members that he was criticizing their decisions.

With nut-job par excellence and has-been 80s chess champion, Gary Kasparov, Nemtsov formed the political opposition movement Solidarnost (Solidarity) in December 2008. Solidarnost attempts to unite the disparate and, frankly pathetic, opposition groups in Russia. Without US-government funding to Solidarnost this time via NED etc. (USAID was finally kicked out of Russia in 2012) it's unlikely that it would still be operating.

Nemtsov became a prominent face of the "opposition" from 2011 to early 2012 when he and his "uncivil society" friends attended a super covert meeting at the US embassy in Moscow shortly after Michael McFaul had been appointed US ambassador. Unfortunately for the erstwhile 'oppositionists', several TV crews were waiting for them and asked them the obvious question: "why are you visiting the new US ambassador?" There was no response from Nemtsov or the others as they entered, but after an hour or two with the ambassador they appear to have developed some hard core social activist skillz and emerged with camera phones at the ready and a party line to chant at the journalists. You can watch the high jinx here.

Of course the answer to the question of what they were doing with the good ambassador was a no-brainer. Ambassador McFaul serves on the board of directors of Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy and is therefore an 'easy touch' for a few $million worth of 'democracy promotion' bonds.

In 2011 the real US government Brookings Institution published a report that called on the US Senate to confirm McFaul and extolled McFaul's merits in "democracy promotion" (i.e. organizing coups) and meeting with "civil society" representatives in Russia (i.e. paying coup plotters). The Brookings report, Give the Next Russian Ambassador a Powerful Tool to Guard Human Rights, also ordered the US government to equip McFaul with a bill to "sanction Russian officials accused of human rights abuses." As with most rabid anti-Russian diatribes couched in vomit-inducing liberal speak, the Brookings report was penned by arch-Neo-Conservative Robert Kagan who is married to freedom cookie queen of the Euromaidan, Victoria "f**k the EU" Nuland, of the US State Dept.

Since 2011 Mr. Nemtsov was Mr. nobody, politically speaking, with even the BBC stating that he had "fallen out of the limelight over the past few years" and "no longer considered part of mainstream politics in Russia". Still, that didn't stop the Western media from referring to Nemtsov as a "prominent opposition politician" whose death has "provoked a worldwide outpouring of sympathy and anger" Really?

Western politicians with an irrational hatred of Russia (i.e. all of them) also took the opportunity to "condemn" the murder while simultaneously using it to defame the Russian government. David Cameron, for example, stated "[Nemtsov's] life was dedicated to speaking up tirelessly for the Russian people, to demanding their right to democracy and liberty under the rule of law, and to an end to corruption". You get the not very subtle insinuation of course. Obama (and others) obnoxiously demanded that the Russian government carry out a "prompt, impartial and transparent investigation", the implicit message being, "we know you did it Putin, and we're warning you, you better admit to it this time!" Barely 24 hours has passed since the shooting and already the British media is reporting that the Kremlin is being "accused of a whitewash".

Of course, the suggestion that Putin, with an 85% approval rating, would have thought it necessary to publicly assassinate a non-entity former politician who couldn't muster 5% of the vote, on the doorstep of the Kremlin no less, and one day before an opposition rally in which the deceased was scheduled to take part, is utterly ridiculous. The point being, by killing Nemtsov in this way, the reaction of Western governments and their media was always going to be as if Putin pulled the trigger himself and posted a selfie of the event on FB. Ergo, if, as the ranks of Western yellow journalists claim, Putin is responsible....where's the selfie!??

Well, you know what's coming next. Do I even need to say it? 'Cui bono'?

Putin's a thug, Putin killed Litvinenko, Putin shot down MH17, Putin annexed Crimea, Putin invaded Ukraine. Yawn.

One final word of advice though to the other opposition "leaders" in Russia, chess-head Kasparov and Navaly in particular. Russia is obviously a dangerous place for opposition "activists". To ensure your safety, please consider asking yourselves these questions:

How much money have I taken from the US government to prepare the ground for a coup in Moscow?

How much money has the US government spent on promoting me as a "prominent opposition leader" in Russia.

Does the US embassy know where I live and do they regularly track my movements.

Does my usefulness to the US government as a still breathing "anti-Putin" activist outweigh my usefulness to the US government as a dead (assassinated) anti-Putin activist?