RUSSIA – Russian news agencies say prominent opposition politician and former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov has been shot dead in Moscow.

The Interfax news agency cited a law enforcement source as saying that Nemtsov was shot four times by an unidentified assailant late in the evening on February 27 and died of his injuries.

Interfax said it did could not independently verify the report.  Nemtsov’s fellow Kremlin critic Ilya Yashin said on Twitter that Nemtsov was shot and is “dead.”

Once considered a potential successor to Russia’s first post-Soviet president, Boris Yeltsin, Nemstov became an opposition politician and fierce critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin.  (link)

“I’m scared Putin will kill me” ~ Boris Nemtsov said weeks before murder.