Russian officer jailed for Chechnya murder is killed
MOSCOW – A former Russian colonel who served a jail term for murdering a Chechen girl in 2000 was shot dead in Moscow Friday and investigators said the killing may have been aimed at provoking nationalist violence, Reuters reported.
Yuri Budanov was shot four times in the head from a pistol in a central Moscow neighbourhood and died at the scene, the federal Investigative Committee said in a statement. It said the unidentified gunman fled the in a car.
Budanov was the most prominent military officer to be prosecuted for crimes against civilians that human rights activists say were widespread during the Kremlin's two post-Soviet wars against separatist rebels in Chechnya.
He was convicted in 2003 and sentenced to 10 years in prison after being convicted of murdering 18-year-old Elza Kungayeva during a tour of duty in the region. He won early release in 2009, prompting bitter protests in Chechnya.
Budanov, who was stripped of his rank, became a symbol of rights abuses by federal forces in Chechnya, part of Russia's restive, mostly Muslim North Caucasus. He has also become a hero among many ethnic Russian ultranationalists.
Investigators said they did not rule out that the killing was meant as a "provocation" aimed at fomenting violence and that there was no immediate evidence that any ethnic minority groups were behind it.
Racist violence has flared in Russia since the 1991 Soviet collapse, with ultranationalists targeting minorities from the Caucasus and Central Asia, many of whom come to Moscow and other big cities to work.
On December 11 -- almost exactly six months ago -- some 7,000 ultranationalists rallied near the Kremlin, chanting racist slogans and attacking passersby of non-Slavic appearance in what President Dmitry Medvedev called "pogroms."