A leading Russian
opposition politician, former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, has
been shot dead in Moscow, Russian officials say.
He died hours after appealing for support for a march on Sunday in Moscow against the war in Ukraine.
Mr Nemtsov was shot at around 23:40 (20:40 GMT) on Friday while crossing Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge accompanied by a woman, Russia's interior ministry said.
He was shot with a pistol from a white car which fled the scene, a police source told Russia's Interfax news agency.
According to Russian-language news website Meduza, "several people" got out of a car and shot him.
One of the politician's colleagues in his RPR-Parnassus party, Ilya Yashin, confirmed Mr Nemtsov's death.
"Unfortunately I can see the corpse of Boris Nemtsov in front of me now," he was quoted as saying by Russia's lenta.ru news website.
In a recent interview, Mr Nemtsov had said he feared Mr Putin would have him killed because of his opposition to the war in Ukraine.
Mr Nemtsov, 55, served as first deputy prime minister under President Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s.
He had earned a reputation as an economic reformer while governor of one of Russia's biggest cities, Nizhny Novgorod.
Falling out of favour with Yeltsin's successor, Mr Putin, he became an outspoken opposition politician.
'Putin's aggression'
In his last tweet, Mr Nemtsov sent out an appeal for Russia's divided opposition to unite at an anti-war march he was planning for Sunday.
"If you support stopping Russia's war with Ukraine, if you support stopping Putin's aggression, come to the Spring March in Maryino on 1 March," he wrote.
Speaking earlier this month to Russia's Sobesednik news website, he had spoken of his fears for his own life.
"I'm afraid Putin will kill me," he said in the article (in Russian) on 10 February.
"I believe that he was the one who unleashed the war in the Ukraine," he added. "I couldn't dislike him more."
Flowers were left at the site of the shooting through the night
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