One of Boris Nemtsov’s killers granted early release to fight in Ukraine

One of the assassins convicted of murdering Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, Temirlan Eskerkhanov, has been granted early release from prison after signing a contract with Russia’s Defence Ministry to fight in Ukraine, Russian state-owned news agency TASS reported on Friday.

“Eskerkhanov signed a contract with the Defence Ministry, was pardoned, after which he was released from his penal colony. He was assigned to an assault unit and is now carrying out combat missions in the special military operation zone,” the source told TASS, using the Kremlin’s preferred euphemism for the war.

The source added that the four other men convicted alongside Eskerkhanov of Nemtsov’s murder, Zaur Dadayev, Anzor Gubashev, Shagit Gubashev and Khamzat Bakhayev, had all turned down an opportunity to sign contracts with the Defence Ministry, and remained in prison.

In 2017, five Chechen men were sentenced to between 11 and 20 years in jail for planning and carrying out the assassination of Nemtsov, shooting him in the back as he walked across a bridge in central Moscow on 28 February 2015. However, the person who ordered the hit on Nemtsov has never been brought to justice.

Eskerkhanov, who according to investigators, coordinated the shooting and then oversaw the perpetrators’ flight from Moscow, had been serving a 14-year prison sentence.

The recently released Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin, who was a close associate of Nemtsov, described Eskerkhanov’s release as “a mockery of the memory of my dead friend”, and said that he would now “go to kill in Ukraine”.

“However, Putin is quite consistent: he frees and arms bandits en masse, making them a pillar of his power. He even meets some of them at the airport on a red carpet with a guard of honour,” Yashin wrote, referring to Putin’s decision to greet convicted FSB assassin Vadim Krasikov at the airport following his release in the same prisoner exchange that freed Yashin last week.