Vilnius---Slain Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov considered asking Lithuania for asylum in 2012, saying he feared persecution by the Kremlin, the Baltic state's former prime minister said Saturday.
Conservative leader Andrius Kubilius said he had promised Nemtsov a safe haven in Lithuania during a private conversation on the sidelines of his party's congress in 2012, but Nemtsov ultimately decided to stay in Russia.
"Nemtsov said he was feeling threatened that he could be arrested and put in jail" following the opposition's so-called "Bolotnaya" protests against Vladimir Putin's third presidential term in 2012, Kubilius told AFP on Saturday.
"He asked if Lithuania would provide political asylum. I told him to have no doubts about it and offered that he stay here, but finally he refused," said Kubilius, who lost general elections later in 2012.
Nemtsov, 55, was gunned down on Friday in Moscow near the Kremlin in a contract-style killing.
Lithuania is among the most hawkish NATO and EU members on Russia, and has repeatedly called for tougher sanctions for Moscow's intervention in Ukraine.
President Dalia Grybauskaite said Saturday the murder showed that Russia was "sliding down to the darkness of terror against its own people".
Local activists will hold a march in the capital Vilnius in memory of Nemtsov on Sunday, in a show of solidarity with a planned opposition march in Moscow.
AFP
