Anna Duritskaya, who was with opposition politician when he was shot dead, complains of being kept under guard and being unable to attend funeral

The girlfriend of the Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, who was with him when he was gunned down outside the Kremlin late on Friday night, has said she is effectively being held prisoner by Russian investigators.

Anna Duritskaya, a 23-year-old model from Ukraine, told an independent Russian television channel that she remembered little of what had happened due to being in shock.



“I don’t want to answer questions about what happened on the bridge. I don’t want to talk about this,” she told TV Rain. “I am in a very difficult psychological condition and I cannot talk about this any more now. I feel bad … I saw no one. I don’t know where he came from, he was behind my back.”

Nemtsov was shot four times in the back as he walked across a bridge close to the Kremlin and St Basil’s Cathedral after having dinner. He will be buried in Moscow on Tuesday. Investigators have announced little progress in apprehending those responsible for gunning down the opposition politician.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest CCTV footage released by a Russian TV channel appears to show Nemtsov shortly before his murder.

Duritskaya said the killer got into a passing white car and sped away, but she added that she neither saw his face, nor the vehicle’s number plate.

She said she was staying in an apartment in Moscow that belongs to friends, but was being guarded around the clock by police and was not allowed to move around freely.



“I’ve told them everything possible, and I don’t know why I am still on Russian territory, as I want to go back to my mum, who is ill and ... in a very difficult psychological state,” said Duritskaya. “For three days, I’ve been driven around in police cars with guards to the investigative committee, and questioned. And nobody has told me when I’ll be let go and why I am being held here.”

Russian opposition activists march in memory of Boris Nemtsov – in pictures Read more

Duritskaya said she had known Nemtsov for about three years.

Speculation that a jealous lover could have been responsible for a professional hit in the very heart of Moscow has been dismissed by Nemtsov’s friends and colleagues as implausible. Duritskaya said shewas being questioned as a witness rather than a suspect, but was nevertheless not allowed to leave Russia.

Asked whether she would attend Nemtsov’s funeral, she said: “I’m not allowed out, don’t you understand? Probably I won’t be able to go.”

A court in Moscow rejected a request from the opposition leader Alexei Navalny to be let out of jail to attend the funeral. Navalny – who, along with Nemtsov, was one of the organisers of a protest march that had been scheduled to take place last Sunday – was jailed for 15 days before the planned demonstration for handing out leaflets. He will be released on Friday.

Late last year, Navalny’s brother Oleg was jailed for three-and-a-half years, in a case widely seen as punishment for Navalny’s political activities.

In Geneva, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, called the killing a “heinous crime which will be fully investigated”. He said Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, “immediately handed down all instructions and is ensuring special control over this investigation”.

However, others have expressed doubt about whether the investigation can possibly be independent, given the widespread suspicion among the opposition that the Kremlin is at least indirectly responsible for the death.

On Russian television, the veteran lawyer Genri Reznik criticised Putin, whose spokesman announced immediately after the killing that it was “100% a provocation” meant to create panic in Russia or make the president look bad. Reznik said that, knowing how the Russian system works, this would have sent a signal to investigators about how they should work on the crime.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Floral tributes to Boris Nemtsov have been left where he was murdered, near St Basil’s cathedral in Moscow. Photograph: Sergei Ilnitsky/EPA

Investigative committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said on Saturday that the main lines of inquiry were personal issues, squabbles within the opposition, Islamic extremism or someone linked to Ukraine.

There was confusion about how much of the was caught on camera. The Kommersant newspaper said all the cameras on the bridge either had captured grainy footage or were turned off “for repairs” at the time. A Moscow city spokesman denied this, however, and said all the relevant video had been passed to investigators.

The only CCTV footage released so far, by Russian channel TV Centre, shows two people believed to be Nemtsov and Duritskaya walking on the bridge, but at the moment of the killing the pair are obscured by a passing snow-clearing machine.

On Sunday, tens of thousands of people marched through Moscow to pay their respects to Nemtsov. The rally largely went off without incident, although it was watched closely by thousands of police officers.

Mourners will be able to say a final farewell to Nemtsov at a ceremony in Moscow on Tuesday, after which he will be buried at the capital’s Troyekurovskoye cemetery.

