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Pessimism palpable amid defiance in Moscow

Thousands rally, mourn Putin critic murdered Friday

At least 30,000 Russians marched on Sunday to the spot outside the Kremlin where opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was gunned down FridayMAXIM SHEMETOV/REUTERS

MOSCOW — At least 30,000 Russians turned out Sunday to mourn an opposition leader who was murdered only a few steps from the Kremlin, amid fears that his death was the beginning of a new wave of violence.

Defiant crowds waving Russia’s tricolor flag and carrying signs that said ‘‘Propaganda Kills’’ filed through Moscow’s heart on a grim, drizzly afternoon, making a pilgrimage to the spot where Boris Nemtsov was gunned down.

The killing was the highest-profile political assassination in Russia during the 15-year rule of President Vladimir Putin.

The march was the largest opposition rally in more than a year, the Associated Press reported. Organizers said the number was closer to 50,000.

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But although the numbers appeared to rival some of the largest protests during a wave of opposition rallies three years ago, few of the participants retained their old hopes for change.

Instead, many said they felt more vulnerable than ever after a year in which intimidating and fervent support for Putin during the annexation of Crimea carried an implicit threat against those who disagree.

Those who took part in the rally said the Friday night slaying was a frightening sign that people who disagree with Russia’s aggressive mainstream risk their lives for saying so publicly. Many said they were now cautious about what they shared with their colleagues or wrote on social media.

‘‘They really want to instigate fear. And they have been partially successful at doing that,’’ said Vladimir Milov, a politician who had worked with Nemtsov in recent weeks to organize an opposition rally that transformed into a memorial after the murder. Milov said many Kremlin critics were now thinking about leaving Russia, convinced that killers would soon come for them, too.

‘‘We will need to revisit the whole strategy after what happened,’’ he said.

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Milov said he and other leaders vowed to stay, but whether they will be as effective without their slain partner was a separate question. He said that the garrulous, charismatic Nemtsov was often the key person who knit together their sometimes fractious parts into a workable alliance.

‘‘It will be much harder to manage this coalition situation without him,’’ he said.

The crowds — young and old, nationalist and pacifist — clogged major arteries in central Moscow to honor Nemtsov, a 55-year-old physicist-turned-politician who once looked as though he had a shot at the presidency.

Many people at the march said the murder was a turning point, and not for the better.

‘‘The overall environment of terror is coming from the television and from people on the streets,’’ said Vladimir Melnik, 32, who works in finance. ‘‘People are starting to hate each other.’’

Violent rhetoric streams from Russia’s state-run television networks, with anchors bragging about the nation’s military prowess and whispering dark accusations of genocide in Ukraine. Top leaders have stoked the atmosphere, with Putin warning about a ‘‘fifth column’’ of Russians trying to erode society from within. That blacklist was widely assumed to include Nemtsov, near the top.

After the murder, Putin expressed his condolences and vowed to hunt down the killers. But through a spokesman on Saturday he was quick to say that the killing was a ‘‘provocation’’ intended to weaken his own standing.

Investigators say that one of the possibilities they are examining is whether the opposition movement itself arranged Nemtsov’s murder so that it could rally around a martyr.

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They also suggested the hypothetical involvement of Islamist extremists, foreign agents, or business or personal rivals. These possibilities were derided by the opposition, who say they have little doubt he was killed because he was one of Putin’s sharpest critics.

Authorities have searched Nemtsov’s Moscow apartment and confiscated many of his files as well as his computer, his friends said. His office in Yaroslavl, 150 miles northeast of Moscow, was also being searched on Sunday, according to local news stories.

Nemtsov, an energetic Westernizer who barnstormed through Russia in the 1990s and helped usher in his nation’s chaotic form of capitalism, rose as high as deputy prime minister under President Boris Yeltsin. In his later years, he consistently criticized Putin, irking the Russian leader over issues ranging from corruption to the conflict in Ukraine.

Though he expressed fears for his safety, he had always gambled that his past service to the Kremlin and his tight connections to the political and business elite provided a sort of immunity, friends say.

There were no serious incidents reported during the Sunday march, but authorities showed little sign of conciliation. A Ukrainian lawmaker who attended the rally was detained because police said he was suspected of ‘‘crimes against Russian citizens’’ in connection with a May 2 fire in Odessa, Ukraine, that killed nearly 50 pro-Russia protesters.

Alexei Honcharenko, an ally of Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, faced legal proceedings on Monday, his lawyer said.

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Investigators also were forcing Nemtsov’s girlfriend of three years, the Ukrainian citizen Anna Duritskaya, to remain in Moscow against her will, her lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov, said. Prokhorov told Russian news outlets that she was under heavy guard as an eyewitness in the case and that she was not being allowed to return home to Ukraine.

Her mother, Inna Duritskaya, said her daughter said that on Nemtsov’s final night, he wanted to walk home from dinner rather than take a taxi.

As they were walking along the bridge, Duritskaya told the Russian Interfax news agency, “she heard a popping sound and felt Boris going limp and falling.’’