In Russia, assassination is often business as usual

It was a bad day to be a bureaucrat in Moscow. In the space of about 12 hours Thursday, assailants tried to kill three federal officials in separate incidents here: a civil court judge, the chief of information for the Russian Ministry of Justice and the director of the agency that prints banknotes and mints coins. The justice official died of multiple gunshot wounds; the judge and the mint director were seriously injured. The attacks, which did not appear related, were unusual only in that they came so closely together. Assaults on prominent government leaders are becoming commonplace in modern Russia, and they are seldom what they first appear. Here, the line between public agencies, private companies and criminal enterprises is often blurred. “In the majority of these cases, the results of the investigations show that it comes down to the issue of economic competition or the criminal settling of scores,” said Oleg Nechiporenko, director of the National Anti-Criminal and Anti-Terror Fund. Full Story