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President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said on Wednesday that the slaying of Boris Y. Nemtsov, a Kremlin critic, had a political subtext, and he called on law enforcement agencies to halt such crimes.

“Headline-making crimes, including politically motivated ones, require our most serious attention,

“We need to rid Russia of the kind of shame and tragedy that we have just witnessed,” he added. “I am referring to the brazen murder of Boris Nemtsov right in the center of Moscow

The thousands who marched in Moscow on Sunday in honor of the murdered opposition politician Boris Nemtsov did so because they recognize just how much has been lost with his death. Nemtsov had been brave enough to tell the truth in Russia under President Vladimir Putin.

There is no evidence the Kremlin ordered Nemtsov's killing, and it would have as much to lose as to gain from such a public execution on one of the most closely surveilled sidewalks in Russia.

Nemtsov’s death may not change things in Russia; much of the population appears to be caught up in a nationalist fervor.

Thousands of Russians marched through central Moscow on Sunday to honor slain opposition politician Boris Nemtsov in Russia's largest mass political event since the 2011-12 protest campaign. The size of the somber crowd led some to comment that if Nemtsov's brazen murder in view of the Kremlin was meant to intimidate the political opposition, it had failed.

So, could the recent shocking assassination of Boris Nemtsov revive the political opposition in Russia? Two factors suggest that this will not be the case.

First, the motives of Nemtsov's killer, as well as who, if anyone, ordered the hit, remain unclear. And even — especially if — the Kremlin was behind the murder, it is highly unlikely that any proof tying President Vladimir Putin to the murder will ever surface.

His killing has once again shaken the world of Russian politics and has shown just how sick it is with hatred, mistrust and intolerance -- even toward a former senior Russian official.

Many different theories concerning his murder have already been put forward, including an increasing number that point to the moral degeneracy of the people. It is difficult to shake the feeling that those who maligned Nemtsov while he was alive by, for example, publishing transcripts of his telephone conversations, continue that perverted abuse after his death.

However, the motives for the murder were never clarified: Investigators chose not to delve into the wilds of the complex relations between politicians and the St. Petersburg mafia. One line of inquiry that drew particular attention -- the theory that Vladimir Barsukov, the "dark lord" of St. Petersburg in the 1990s, was linked to the killing -- quickly fizzled out.

Putin’s aggressive foreign policy, his increasingly conservative domestic policy, his labeling the opposition a “fifth column” and “national traitors,” his state television whipping up a militant, nationalistic fervor — all of this creates a certain atmosphere. Putin, after all, has a history of playing with fire, only to have the flames get away from him. After years of the Kremlin tacitly supporting ultranationalist, neo-Nazi groups, the same skinheads staged a violent protest at the foot of the Kremlin walls in 2010 while riot police officers stood by and watched helplessly. Today, a rabid nationalism has swallowed up most of the country, and it is no longer clear that Putin can control it. “In this kind of atmosphere, everything is possible,” Pavlovsky told me. “This is a Weimar atmosphere. There are no longer any limits.”

Nemtsov’s assassination took that warning to its logical conclusion. Now, “we live in a different political reality,” tweeted Leonid Volkov, a prominent opposition activist. “The fact that they killed him is a message to frighten everyone, the brave and the not brave,” Yashin said. “That this is what happens to people who go against the government of our country.” Anatoly Chubais — who, like Nemtsov, served in the Yeltsin government, and who remains close to Putin — visited the site of the shooting this morning. “If, just a few days ago, people in our city are carrying signs that say ‘Let’s finish off the fifth column,’ and today they kill Nemtsov,” he said in a statement, referring to the Kremlin-sponsored anti-Maidan protest in Moscow last weekend, “what will happen tomorrow?” Or, as Albats put it, “Hunting season is open.”

Two of five suspects in the killing of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov have been charged with murder and one has confessed, a judge in Moscow said Sunda

Dadaev, speaking from a defendant's cage in the courtroom, didn't comment on the confession but asked for a fair trial, Russian news agencies reported.

Russian authorities announced Saturday they had detained two suspects from the Muslim-dominated Caucasus region in Nemtsov's death.

Thought the Soviet Union was anti-American? Try today’s Russia.

After a year in which furious rhetoric has been pumped across Russian airwaves, anger toward the United States is at its worst since opinion polls began tracking it. From ordinary street vendors all the way up to the Kremlin, a wave of anti-U.S. bile has swept the country, surpassing any time since the Stalin era, observers say.

The anger is a challenge for U.S. policymakers seeking to reach out to a shrinking pool of friendly faces in Russia. And it is a marker of the limits of their ability to influence Russian decision-making after a year of sanctions.

L, Ukraine — Several residents in this city in far eastern Ukraine said they want a united country, but they're split on the use of force to solve Ukraine's war with Russian-backed separatists.

The survey authors did not define neutrality other than to point out that European countries have urged Ukraine to move closer to the EU, while Russia wants Ukraine aligned with former Soviet republics.

It comes as more of President Obama's advisers have voiced support for providing military aid to Ukraine's military. A slight 52% majority of Ukrainians support this move, with three-quarters of respondents supportive in the west, and three-fifths supportive in the north. In the east 62% opposed U.S. military support, and the South is evenly divided.

Carrying flowers and portraits, tens of thousands of people somberly marched Sunday in Moscow to mourn opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, whose slaying on the streets of the capital has shaken Russia's beleaguered opposition. (Mar. 1) AP

In Russia, power is a pyramid. This pyramid was built by Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century – an ambitious, brutal tsar overrun by paranoia and a great many other vices. With the help of his personal army – the oprichnina – he cruelly and bloodily divided the Russian state into power and people, friend and foe, and the gap between them became the deepest of moats

His friendship with the Golden Horde convinced him that the only way to rule the hugeness of Russia was by becoming an occupier of this enormous zone. The occupying power had to be strong, cruel, unpredictable, and incomprehensible to the people. The people should have no choice but to obey and worship i

And a single person sits at the peak of this dark pyramid, a single person possessing absolute power and a right to all.