the berlin wall had just fallen. all over east germany angry crowds roamed the streets, lashing out at symbols of communist rule. that night in dresden they found a target, the local kgb headquarters. a mob surrounded the building. as the hour grew later the crowd grew larger. inside peering through the curtains was a young kgb lieutenant colonel named vladimir putin. he was terrified that they were going to storm the building. putin was a junior officer. but the boss was away. he was in charge. the berlin wall in come down. police weren t going to help. and he called for instructions. desperate for help, putin dialed kgb headquarters in moscow. over and over again. finally one official told him simply, moscow is silent. and i think it felt like a deep betrayal to him. vladimir putin was on his own. he went down into the bowels of the building and fired up the furnace. he finds himself in the basements at a furnace shoveling documents as he hears demonstrations
moscow. four of the shots hit him in the back. the assassination was extremely professional. four or five people working, a spotter we are, a guy driving a snowplow, the girlfriend mo he was working with didn t realize he had been shot until the car was driving off. the kremlin defied any involvement in nemsov s murder. but death has come often for putin s opponents. during the president s reign dozens of his critics met a similar face. but not every voice silenced. alexey navalny electrified crowds during the 2011 protests. alexey navalny was probably the brightest star of those protests. and his popular youtube videos exposed the regime s corruption.
succeeded yeltsin and showed what kind of ruler he would be, nemsov became a vociferous critic of putin. in 2015 he was planning owe opposition march to protest against the regime. it was two days before that march when nemtsov was shot, four times in the back while he was walking across the bridge. press reports at the time called it the highest profile assassination since the stalin era. he wasn t the only target. days before nemtsov was assassinated, russian authorities had thrown one of his allies in jail. another vocal putin critic. his friend was put in jail for 15 days for the high crime of handing out leaflets inviting people to join the opposition march, the one that got nemtsov
senator john mccain was right about putin very early on. he publicly warned about the upcoming authoritarian effort in the regime. in february of 2000 before putin became president of russia this is during a south carolina republican presidential debate in another presidential debate in 2008, he warned of the coming foreign aggression from the putin regime. that, of course, also came true as well. senator mccain was a friend of my very close friend who came to see him many times when he visited washington. one of those meetings together and the last meeting that took place between them was in january of 2014 and senator mccain expressed his concern and told boris that, you know, he should not go back to russia to which mr. nemsov replied, it s my country. i m not giving up the fight. i have no choice. just over a year later he was killed, gunned down on a bridge in front of the kremlin.
putin has chosen to act in this way. putin shot back calling the accusations complete dribble and rubbish. pro kremlin tv went even further blaming the former double agent himself. [ speaking russian ] back to that night on the bridge, the allegation that s putin might have played a role in boris nemsov s murder may stem in part from the evidence that nemsov had been accumulating against president putin. he was about to reveal information that would prove russia s involvement in the conflict in ukraine. that ukraine report was released a few months after nemsov s murder. but there was an earlier nemsov report published in 2012 that