Governor of the Magadan Region Killed in Center of Moscow

The assassination was allegedly taped by security cameras

The governor of the Magadan region, former member of the Fedration Council, Valentin Tsvetkov, was killed in the center of Moscow today. The happened at about 9 a.m. on Moscow’s Novy Arbat street. The criminals managed to escape.

The governor was killed as he was leaving the Angara restaurant. It was reported that the assassination was taped by security cameras. A Moscow police officer said that the tape showed a man wearing dark clothes. The man shot his gun twice and then disappeared. One of the bullets was meant for the official and the other for his bodyguard. The latter was not injured. However, the Central Internal Affairs Directorate later rejected this information.

Andrey Klimov, a deputy of the Russian State Duma, expressed his opinion regarding the assassination of the Magadan regional governor, Valentin Tsvetkov.

Why do you think was Vladimir Tsvetkov killed?

It is too early to think of anything yet. A governor is a person who always has a lot of enemies and opponents. Law-enforcement bodies are supposed to cast off those versions, which definitely have nothing to do with the assassination. I am not well informed of all the details and circumstances of the tragedy. I was at a plenary session at the moment when it happened.

I just would like to say that the death roll amid deputies has been ten times as high as amid all Russian citizens lately. Until recently, there were no regional governors killed. Now there is a precedent. This is a strong blow to those who believed that the criminal situation in the country was getting better. It is actually not about certain reasons of the assassination. It is about the fact that the government and the state was attacked by criminal and terrorist elements.

I do not know what kind of unofficial reaction the law-enforcement bodies will have regarding the assassination. Yet, it is obvious that it is time to struggle against the people behind all of this. I did not know Valentin Tsvetkov. However, I have communicated with those people who personally knew him. They all said that he was an intelligent man. Indeed, he had a wide range of interests, and he dealt with a lot of things. Particularly, he was involved in budgetary and currency regulation issues in the State Duma.

It was informed that Valentin Tsvetkov had a meeting with Vladimir Putin. Do you know anything about it?

Yesterday, I talked to a man from the governor’s personnel, but it was just a routine call. I did not even know that Valentin Tsvetkov was in Moscow.

For the time being, the investigation has three possible variants: the governor was killed either for personal motives, because of his political activities, or for financial reasons. It is too early to make any conclusions, but which of these versions is the truest in your opinion?

First of all, a governor is not allowed to deal with commercial activities. As far as political motives are concerned, I think it might be possible to talk about it if there was an election campaign, or something like that. At the same time, a governor runs an active economic – not commercial – policy. I personally think that there were more economic than political reasons for the assassination of the Magadan regional governor.

Sergey Stefanov PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov