Anna Durytska

Anna Durytska (Ukrainian: Анна Дурицька; born 27 November 1991, Bila Tserkva, Ukraine) is a Ukrainian fashion model.[1][2][3], a finalist for Miss Ukraine Universe in 2018.[4][5] On 27 February 2015, she was the sole eyewitness to the assassination of Boris Nemtsov.[6][7][8] 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.[9] The Foreign Ministry of Ukraine, stated that it had intervened to secure her release and return from Moscow.[10][11] Pro-Putin Russian news agencies had claimed that she was forced by Nemtsov to have an abortion in Switzerland,[12] in an attempt to implicate her and the Security Service of Ukraine in the murder.[13][14][15]

On returning to Kyiv, Ukraine she went into hiding, under protection of armed guards,[16] assigned to her by the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, after she had received death threats.[17][18][19] Pro-Putin 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.[20]

In December 2018, The Guardian republished Durytska's TV Rain interview from the time of her release,[21][22] 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".[23][24][25]

In 2017, she planned to join her friend Ankit Love in London, and attend Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design.[26]