The New Great Game Round-Up #89

The Great Game Round-Up brings you the latest newsworthy developments regarding Central Asia and the Caucasus region. We document the struggle for influence, power, hegemony and profits between a U.S.-dominated NATO, its GCC proxies, Russia, China and other regional players.

Although it is still not clear who is responsible for the assassination of Russian opposition figure Boris Nemtsov within sight of the Kremlin, it is safe to say that Nemtsov's killing has been a gift from heaven for Washington. Western media had solved the case before Nemtsov's body was cold: Putin did it! And even if Putin did not personally pull the trigger, the Russian President is still responsible for Nemtsov's death because he did create the “atmosphere of hate” in Russia, which enabled the killing. Neither the suspicious timing of the assassination nor the ensuing clan war in the Kremlin led Western pundits to rethink their assessment. But the Russian media's coverage in the aftermath of the murder has been hardly any better. Russian media put out several more or less absurd theories, from promoting the Charlie Hebdo angle to blaming the Nemtsov killing on the inept Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) or the new leader of the “Chechen rebels” fighting for Kiev in the Donbass:

Pro-Kremlin Newspaper Spins Conspiracy Theory That Nemtsov Was Killed By Pro-Kiev Chechen

Two weeks after the assassination of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, the pro-Kremlin Komsomolskaya Pravda (KP) has revived a claim first floated a few days after his death and then abandoned – that Adam Osmayev, a pro-Kiev Chechen fighting against Russian-backed separatists in the Donbass, is somehow linked to Nemtsov's death.

KP says they have obtained an “exclusive interview” from an officer of the FSB who is in the investigation group for Nemtsov's murder. The unnamed officer “gave the name of the most likely contractor of the shooting of the politician [Nemtsov].”

© Photo AP/Pavel Golovkin

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