Russia’s most prominent opposition politician, Alexei Navalny, was released from prison on Friday, and vowed that the murder of his ally Boris Nemtsov during his 15-day sentence had not intimidated him.



“There will be no let-up in our efforts, we will give up nothing. This act of terror has not achieved its goal in this sense,” said an unshaven Navalny, with a sports bag slung over his shoulder, after leaving the Moscow detention centre.

He was jailed for 15 days for handing out leaflets in the metro for a protest rally he was due to lead with Nemtsov on 1 March. Two days before the rally, Nemtsov was shot on a bridge close to the Kremlin, the most prominent politician to be killed during Putin’s 15-year rule over Russia. A week later, no arrests have been made over the murder.

A court refused Navalny leave to attend Nemtsov’s funeral, held in Moscow on Tuesday. He said he would go home to shower and change and then planned to visit Nemtsov’s grave.

“I am not frightened and I am sure my associates are not frightened either,” said Navalny.

Alexei Navalny, right, and the late Boris Nemtsov at a protest rally in Moscow. Photograph: Misha Japaridze/AP

A protest march has been organised for 19 April, but the opposition appears to be demoralised and unsure about how to win any concessions from the Kremlin. A mourning rally for Nemtsov in central Moscow attracted tens of thousands of people, but with Putin’s official ratings higher than ever and a new climate of fear among the opposition, galvanising a meaningful street movement is likely to be a hard task.

To add to this, Russian authorities have claimed that any attempts to bring people on to the streets are aimed at creating a Kiev-style Maidan protest in Russia, and serve nefarious western interests. Navalny has accused the Kremlin of being directly responsible for Nemtsov’s death; other opposition leaders say they doubt the killing was ordered by the Kremlin but believe this new atmosphere, in which the opposition is portrayed as a “fifth column”, is to blame.

On Wednesday, President Vladimir Putin called the murder a “disgrace” but his spokesman has said the president believes it to be a “provocation” carried out with the goal of discrediting Russia. Investigators have offered several versions but appear to have excluded what Nemtsov’s allies believe to be the most likely reason for his killing: his political activity as an opposition leader.

Boris Nemtsov’s whole career was not aimed at helping Russia, but at the interests of foreign states Nikolai Starikov

Nemtsov had been working on a report about the involvement of Russian soldiers in the Ukraine conflict, a taboo topic which the Kremlin has repeatedly denied despite convincing evidence. Nemtsov’s aide Olga Shorina said that a day before his death the politician had told her about his investigations into paratroopers from the town of Ivanovo apparently killed in Ukraine. He had been so worried about the sensitivity of the information, he scribbled a note to her on a piece of paper rather than speak out loud about the dead soldiers, Shorina told Reuters.

On Thursday, leaders of a new “anti-Maidan” organisation held a press conference in Moscow, in which they denied that their movement’s calls to confront “traitors” in Russia’s midst had contributed to an atmosphere of hatred. Instead, they insisted Nemtsov had been killed by the United States, a conspiracy theory that has been given much airtime on Russian television.

“Boris Nemtsov’s whole career was not aimed at helping Russia, but at the interests of foreign states,” said Nikolai Starikov, one of Anti-Maidan’s leaders. “Boris Nemtsov is the first victim of the Maidan in Russia … he was killed by his American curators.”

In Kiev, Nemtsov’s girlfriend, Anna Duritskaya, who was with him when he was murdered, has applied for state protection after receiving threats, it emerged. It was unclear who was threatening the 23-year-old. She cooperated with Russian investigators, giving testimony for several hours after the incident. On Monday, she complained she was being held under guard and not allowed to leave Russian territory, but late on Monday evening she flew back to Kiev.