Anna Duritskaya had said that she was being held under police guard in a friend’s apartment in Moscow

The Ukrainian girlfriend of murdered opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who is the only known witness to his killing on Friday night, has reportedly flown to Kiev after being held for questioning by authorities in Moscow.

Ukrainian foreign ministry spokesman Yevgeny Perebiinis said Anna Duritskaya had flown to Kiev after the Ukrainian embassy in Russia “provided all the necessary assistance for her return to her home country,” Interfax news agency reported.

Duritskaya, a 23-year-old model who said she had known Nemtsov for about three years, told the independent channel TV Rain on Monday that she was being held under police guard in a friend’s apartment in Moscow and not being allowed to move around freely.

She said she had been questioned by the investigative committee for three days and had not been told why she was being held or for how long.

“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,” Duritskaya said.

Nemtsov and Duritskaya had been walking across a bridge next to the Kremlin after dinner on Friday night when an unknown assassin shot the former deputy prime minister – a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin – four times in the back, killing him on the spot.

Duritskaya told TV Rain she had been in shock and remembered little about what happened. She said the killer had got into a light-coloured passing car after the shooting, but said she did not see the person’s face nor the vehicle’s number plate.

“I don’t want to answer questions about what happened on the bridge. I don’t want to talk about this,” she said. “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.”

Although numerous surveillance cameras have been photographed in the area of the shooting, only inconclusive footage from a local television channel’s distant camera has been published. In that video, a snow-removal truck passes in front of what appears to be the couple at the exact time of the murder.

The federal protection service, which is in charge of guarding the Kremlin, said on Monday that its cameras had not captured the killing. But blogger Mitya Aleshkovsky published a photograph he took of a Kremlin security camera shortly after the tragedy occurred, which he said showed the camera was “pointed directly at the place of the murder”.

Duritskaya’s lawyer Vadim Prokhorov said on Monday that she would refuse to undergo a lie detector test because there was no reason to doubt her testimony, and it would place additional stress on her.

US president Barack Obama said on Monday that the killing of Nemtsov is a sign of a worsening climate in Russia where civil rights and media freedoms have been rolled back in the last several years.

“This is an indication of a climate at least inside of Russia in which civil society, independent journalists, people trying to communicate on the internet, have felt increasingly threatened, constrained. And increasingly the only information that the Russian public is able to get is through state-controlled media outlets,” Obama said.

“I have no idea at this point exactly what happened. What I do know is more broadly the fact that freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of information, basic civil rights and civil liberties inside of Russia are in much worse shape now than they were four or five, 10 years ago.”



The news outlet Izvestiya, which is known for its close ties to the authorities, reported shortly after midnight on Tuesday that the team investigating Nemtsov’s killing “have focused on the explanation connected with the so-called Ukrainian trace.” Investigators suspect his murder was ordered by Ukrainian intelligence services or pro-Kiev fighter named Adam Osmayev, an unnamed source reportedly said. Osmayev, a native of Russia’s Chechnya republic who has recently re-appeared fighting on the side of the government in eastern Ukraine, was charged in 2012 with a foiled attempt to assassinate Putin.

Putin’s spokesman said shortly after the killing that it was “100% a provocation,” drawing criticism from some that the Kremlin could be sending signals about how it wants investigators to proceed.

