Interior Minister Hopes to Find Both the Killer And the Contractor of the Yushenkov Assassination

Russia's Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov hopes to find both the killer and the contractor of the assassination of Sergei Yushenkov, State Duma deputy. "We hope that we will first find the killer and through him, the contractor," the minister told journalists in Vladivostok on Monday.

According to him, the investigation group is working on the case and has found one more witness to the murder, whose testimony may help to make the identikit photo of the killer. The gun dropped at the murder site will also help determine the group of people who delivered it to Moscow.

The minister said the number of contract murders is dwindling in Russia. "As for the murder of prominent persons, several of them have happened this year," said Gryzlov. "The main task now is to find the killers and contractors of such scandalous murders." Boris Gryzlov said several murders contracted for political and commercial reasons in 2020 had been solved. In his words, "statistics shows that over a half of contract murders are solved."

The minister is making a working tour of six regions of the Far Eastern Federal District. In Vladivostok, where he came on Sunday after a conference on the struggle against illegal immigration to Russia in Blagoveshchensk, the Interior Minister held a conference with the heads of Maritime militia bosses on the struggle against the theft and illegal expert of timber and marine biological resources.

In addition to the Amur Region and the Maritime Territory, Boris Gryzlov plans to visit the Sakhalin, Magadan and Kamchatka regions and the Khabarovsk Territory. A conference of the heads of power departments of the Far Eastern Federal District is to be held in Khabarovsk on April 25. The conferees will discuss the influence of crime on the leading economic areas of the Russian Far East.