Posted on 04/17/2003 12:00:54 PM PDT by anymouse
A veteran liberal member of Russia's State Duma, or parliament, has been shot dead in a Moscow suburb. Sergey Yushenkov was shot several times in the chest in the latest political assassination to rock post-Soviet Russia.
The BBC's Russian affairs analyst Stephen Dalziel says such a high-profile killing stands out even in a country where murders of politicians and businessmen are relatively common.
Mr Yushenkov was one of the co-founders of a new political party, Liberal Russia.
Another MP from the party, Vladimir Golovlev, was shot dead last August in a killing which Mr Yushenkov described as politically motivated.
The party was at one stage in funding talks with Boris Berezovsky, the exiled Russian tycoon now facing extradition from the UK on fraud charges, but negotiations broke down.
Admired reformer
Mr Yushenkov, a former colonel in the Soviet army, was no stranger to controversy.
He was a strong proponent of military reform and favoured the creation of a free market in Russia when many deputies were dragging their feet.
In 2000, he was involved in setting up the Liberal Russia Party which finally achieved full legal registration just hours before he was shot near his home in north-west Moscow.
The BBC's Stephen Dalziel in Moscow, says many Russians will regard the murder of one of the country's leading liberals as a serious threat to the democratic process, with parliamentary elections due in December.
He says Mr Yushenkov was admired by many for his high political principles and his honesty.
He was not afraid to criticise the Russian political establishment, including President Vladimir Putin and spoke out against human rights abuses and the war in Chechnya.
Once again Tom Clancy is to precient (reference beginning of "The Bear and the Dragon".)
Clancy can be spooky. On 9/ll when we were hearing reports of a 4th hijacked airliner, I kept thinking of the attack on the Capitol building in "Debt of Honor". And I've read suggestions that was the target, only some passengers rose up and stopped it, crashing instead in Pennsylvania.
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