Posted on 04/10/2005 10:55:52 AM PDT by nuconvert
Former Top Russian Intelligence Official Gunned Down in Moscow
The Associated Press
Apr 10, 2005
MOSCOW (AP) - Assailants wielding automatic weapons from a passing car gunned down a former top Russian intelligence official while he drove on a Moscow street Sunday, Russian news agencies reported. Col. Gen. Anatoly Trofimov, former deputy chief of the Federal Security Service under President Boris Yeltsin, was shot in his sport utility vehicle around 7:30 p.m. on a northern street, the Interfax news agency reported. He died on the scene.
The assailants fired from a small car, the ITAR-Tass news agency said. A woman believed to be Trofimov's wife was in the car and was seriously wounded and hospitalized, news agencies said.
Ekho Moskvyi radio said the attack may have been a contract killing related to unidentified business deals.
A duty officer at the Federal Security Service headquarters could not confirm the report, and phone calls to the police went unanswered Sunday evening.
Trofimov, who also served as head of the Moscow branch of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, was fired by Yeltsin in 1997 following an examination by federal accountants for "gross violations and flaws in his work."
The Federal Security Service is the main successor agency to the KGB.
Top Russian business and political leaders routinely are attacked, often as a part of shady business deals. Last month, Anatoly Chubais, the head of the state-controlled Unified Energy Systems power grid, was ambushed by assailants, who detonated a bomb and raked his armored car with automatic weapons fire as he was being driven to work just outside Moscow.
Last summer, the editor of Forbes Magazine's Russian edition, Paul Klebnikov, was gunned down outside the magazine's offices
Perhaps it has less to do with his intelligence service and more to do with subsequent Mafyia connections. This is total speculation, and I do not want to impeach the character of a dead man I don't know. But as I understand it, the government and the mob go hand in hand at times over there.
Seems Wise Guys rule Russia.
--money--
An opponent of Pootie Poot Poot?
No, but it sounds like his business dealings got him killed, not his former position.
One never knows.
If he were a 'Middle East' specialist this would have the same look and feel as having a bunch of top biotech/disease/microbiology specialists dropping dead did a while back.
*adjusting tinfoil chapeau* Sure. That's what they want you to think. *looks around*...
- not that his business dealings and former position couldn't be intertwined.
True. Want some foil?
What's tin foil about a intel officer being gunned down in Moscow?
For a country that still has most of the glitterati and intelligentsia fooled about the genocide of 100 million, it is most certain that this liquidation is just another in a long line
"...gunned down..."
There must be a typographical error in this story as everyone knows that guns are not permitted in Russia, and therefore do not exist.
...guns are not permitted in Russia Hah. Also sex and vodka are not permitted. Or laughter.
Or fun. They don't even have a word for fun...
According to Russian news sites, he prosecuted political opposition/human rights activists until late 1980s and managed anti-corruption and counter-intelligence services after that (not both at the same time). He was fired from FSB in 1996 and has been in private business since then.
An ex-FSB officer Litvinenko, who now resides in UK, claims this is a political assasination, because of Trofimov's opposition to Chechnya war and Putin. I have no idea what Litvinenko's credibility is.
ping
bump
Bump.
Here is another article on this story of fmr. FSB General Assassination.
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/04/11/fsbhit.shtml
I'm afraid it will be another murder that is not solved. Actual assailants may be found (if they are not dead already), but never those who ordered it.
Here just the sample of the list of assassinations or suspicious deaths that were never really solved during either Putin or Yeltsin era.
Paul Khlebnikov, Journalist
Sergei Yushenkov, Member of Parlament
Dmitri Kholodov, Journalist
Artyom Borovik, Investigative Journalist, Reporter, Writer, Publisher (Technically it was air crash, but many suspect a foul play).
Yuri Shekochikhin, Journalist, Investigative Reporter (Sudden death under Questionable Circumstances)
Galina Starovoitova, Activist, former MP
Ivan Kivelidi, Businessman
Vladislav Listev, Journalist, Talk Show Host
As for guns, shotguns, rifles (including SKSs), small caliber pistols are allowed by permit. Vodka is not the primary drink, beer is, it holds 73% of the market and Russia is number 12 on the Alcohol consumption charts (US is 19). The other 11 are all EU nations. Ireland, England, France, Germany all beat out Russia by a long shot.
But stereotyping is so much fun.
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