On 27 February 2015, she was the sole eyewitness to the
assassination of Boris Nemtsov. Durytska had been in a relationship for over two years with Nemtsov, a leading opposition figure to
Vladimir Putin, and
Russian military intervention in Ukraine. She was held under
house arrest by Russian police following the murder. The
Foreign Ministry of Ukraine stated that it had intervened to secure her release and return from Moscow. Pro-Kremlin Russian news agencies had claimed that she was forced by Nemtsov to have an abortion in
Switzerland, in an attempt to implicate her and the
Security Service of Ukraine in the murder. On returning to
Kyiv, Ukraine, she went into hiding, under protection of armed guards, assigned to her by the
Prosecutor General of Ukraine, after she had received death threats. Pro-Kremlin news agencies leaked provocative photos of Durytska, in an attempt to discredit her, following which she refused to return to Russia to testify in the trial. In December 2018,
The Guardian republished Durytska's
TV Rain interview from the time of her release, in which she called for the street of the
Russian Embassy in London to be renamed in memory of Nemtsov.
Washington D.C. had previously done so, under the "D.C. Law 22-92 Boris Nemtsov Plaza Designation Act of 2018". == Personal life ==