Moscow--Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, was gunned down while walking in sight of the Kremlin late Friday, prompting an international chorus of condemnation.
The Kremlin decried as a provocation the murder of the 55-year-old former deputy prime minister, which came ahead of an opposition rally he was set to lead this weekend and sent shock waves across the country.
US President Barack Obama led condemnation of the "brutal" and "vicious murder" of Nemtsov, whom he had met on a visit to Moscow, and called on Russia to conduct an impartial probe.
Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Russian leader had taken the investigation "under personal control".
The murder of the outspoken critic of Russia's involvement in Ukraine, on a bridge near the Kremlin, "bears the hallmarks of a contract killing," Peskov said on radio, describing it as a provocation.
The brazen assassination was one of the most highest-profile killings during Putin's 15 years in power and recalled the shooting of anti-Kremlin reporter Anna Politkovskaya, who was gunned down on Putin's birthday in 2006.
Investigators said Nemtsov was shot by unidentified assailants as he was walking with a Ukrainian woman along a bridge just metres (yards) from the Kremlin.
"According to preliminary information, an unidentified person shot at Boris Nemtsov no fewer than 7-8 times from a car as he was walking along the Bolshoi Moskvoretsky bridge," said investigators.
Interior ministry spokeswoman Yelena Alekseyeva said Nemtsov was hit by four bullets.
An AFP reporter saw a blood stain on the rain-soaked pavement on the side of the bridge near the red walls of the Kremlin, with roses laid by a police barrier at the scene.
- 'Beyond imagination' -
Speaking on radio just hours before his murder, Nemtsov sounded upbeat and urged Russians to take to the streets and join a major opposition rally planned for Sunday.
"The key political demand is an immediate end to the Ukraine war," he said on popular Echo of Moscow radio, adding that Putin should quit.
"A dead-end in both domestic and foreign policies. They should go," said Nemtsov, who reportedly was working on a report detailing Russia's involvement in the Ukraine conflict.
After working as a research scientist in the late Soviet era, Nemtsov rose to prominence as governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region in central Russia and became a vice prime minister in the late 1990s under the presidency of Boris Yeltsin.
After leaving parliament in 2003, he led several opposition parties and groups.
An accomplished orator with a rock star image and popular with women, Nemtsov was one of the key speakers at mass opposition rallies against Putin's return to the Kremlin in 2012.
He developed a reputation for writing critical reports about corruption and other misspending under Putin.
In 2013, he said up to $30 billion of the estimated $50 billion assigned to the Olympic Games Russia was to host in Sochi had gone missing.
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