Free Republic

The Taganka prosecutor's office in Moscow has initiated a criminal investigation on the forcible suicide of Kommersant journalist Ivan Safronov, who died under unknown circumstances last Friday when he fell from a window in the stairway of the Khrushchev-era five-story building in which he lived. The police and prosecutor initially characterized his death as suicide. Safronov, who turned 51 last month, wrote about the army and space. It is known that he was preparing a publication on Russian arms deliveries to the Middle East that could have caused a major scandal. Two students who live in the building across the...

A senior Russian journalist who embarrassed the country's powerful military establishment with a series of damaging stories has been found dead outside his flat in mysterious circumstances. The body of Ivan Safronov, the 51-year-old defence correspondent for Russia's progressive Kommersant newspaper, was discovered on Friday. He apparently fell from a fifth-floor window. Although prosecutors say they suspect Mr Safranov committed suicide, colleagues of the dead journalist today insisted that he had no reason to kill himself. He is also the latest in a long line of Russian journalists to have died in unexplained circumstances, they added. "Nobody believes he could...