Temirlan Eskirkhanov. Photo: social media

One of the assassins convicted of murdering Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, Temirlan Eskirkhanov, has been granted early release from prison after signing a contract with Russia’s Defence Ministry to fight in Ukraine, Russian state-owned news agency TASS reported on Friday.

“Eskirkhanov signed a contract with the Defence Ministry, was pardoned, after which he was released from his penal colony. He was assigned to an assault unit and is now carrying out combat missions in the special military operation zone,” the source told TASS, using the Kremlin’s preferred euphemism for the war.

The source added that the four other men convicted alongside Eskirkhanov of Nemtsov’s murder, Zaur Dadayev, Anzor Gubashev, Shagit Gubashev and Khamzat Bakhayev, had all turned down an opportunity to sign contracts with the Defence Ministry, and remained in prison.

In 2017, five Chechen men were sentenced to between 11 and 20 years in jail for planning and carrying out the assassination of Nemtsov, shooting him in the back as he walked across a bridge in central Moscow on 28 February 2015. However, the person who ordered the hit on Nemtsov has never been brought to justice.

Eskerkhanov, who according to investigators, coordinated the shooting and then oversaw the perpetrators’ flight from Moscow, had been serving a 14-year prison sentence.