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​Hope and fear mix following funeral of Boris Nemtsov

Hundreds waited in line Tuesday to pay their respects to slain Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov
Boris Nemtsov's funeral draws long line of mourners 01:56

MOSCOW -- Mourners waited in the bitter cold for hours on Tuesday to pay their respects to slain Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov. Their faces said it all -- sadness and shock that such a well-known politician as Nemtsov could be murdered in cold blood just steps away from the Kremlin.

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Mourners line up to pay their respects at the funeral for Boris Nemtsov CBS News

I spoke with a woman named Katya, who worked with Nemtsov in the 1990s. She told me she was disgusted by the assassination but hopes that the tragedy will bring Russia's opposition together.

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Katya CBS News

"We must hope that everything will be okay," said Katya. "We need to be optimistic."

But few of Nemtsov's close associates are as optimistic.

"The kind of propaganda war that we is watching for at least a year is unbelievable," said Yevgenia Albats, the editor of one of Russia's few liberal publications.

Like many journalists who openly criticize the Kremlin, Albats believes she is a target and that the Kremlin is at war with people like herself.

"It is a war and Boris is the first, but not the last victim of this war," she told me.

Albats says she and others like her fear for their safety.

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Yevgenia Albats CBS News

"We think about the possibility that we probably are not going to live that long," said Albats.

Four days after Nemtsov's assassination and there have been no arrests. People we spoke to said that even if they catch the killer, we will never find out who ordered his death.

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