Yeltsin Outraged By Murder Of Liberal
Deputy
09:42 a.m. Nov 21, 1998 Eastern
By Konstantin Trifonov
ST PETERSBURG, Russia (Reuters) - The
overnight murder of a liberal parliamentary deputy
shocked and outraged Russian leaders Saturday,
moving President Boris Yeltsin to take personal
charge of the investigation.
Police said a man and a woman intercepted Galina
Starovoitova and an aide in the stairwell at her
apartment in the center of St Petersburg Friday night
and shot them with an automatic weapon and a
pistol.
Starovoitova was shot directly in the head and killed
instantly, police told a briefing. The aide, Ruslan
Linkov, was hospitalized with serious head wounds.
In a statement read out by top Kremlin aide Oleg
Sysuyev on Ekho Moskvy radio Yeltsin said he was
''deeply outraged'' and vowed to see the killers
brought to justice.
Yeltsin described Starovoitova as a ''passionate
tribune of democracy'' and one of his own ''closest
comrades in arms.''
''The shots that have interrupted her life have
wounded every Russian for whom democratic ideas
are dear. This impertinent challenge is thrown to the
whole of our society,'' he said.
After reading the text, Sysuyev said he had just
spoken to Yeltsin's daughter, who told him ''the
president is bitterly upset by this barbarity.''
Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov said he too was
''outraged.''
''This banditry must be brought to an immediate
end,'' he said in televised remarks.
Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin flew to St
Petersburg Saturday morning and told reporters at
the airport he was sent on Yeltsin's personal order to
oversee the investigation.
He said a criminal case had been launched under a
statute covering ''terrorism.'' A spokeswoman for the
ministry said he would return to Moscow Saturday.
Interfax news agency said he would brief Yeltsin in
person.
Starovoitova, 52, a co-chairman of the Democratic
Russia political party, was one of the most outspoken
pro-democracy campaigners during reforms under
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and the early years
of post-Soviet Russia.
More recently, as electoral defeats thinned the ranks
of liberals in the State Duma lower house of
parliament, she was known as a relatively lonely
voice loudly upholding the principles of the early
pro-democracy movement.
In recent weeks she was a leader in the campaign to
censure a senior Communist deputy for repeated
anti-Jewish remarks.
She was reported to be preparing to run for the
vacant seat of governor of the Leningrad region
surrounding St Petersburg, and was also said to be
mulling a presidential bid in 2000.
Gorbachev said he had no doubt the killing was
political.
''She was erudite, brave, active,'' he told Interfax
news agency. ''This is a serious loss not just for
those close (to her) but for Russia.''
Former Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar, a close ally of
Starovoitova's in the liberal political camp, told Ekho
Moskvy: ''For the past few years Starovoitova
attempted to prove the thesis that democracy is
possible in Russia.''
Starovoitova was the first high level woman politician
to be assassinated in Russia.
The murder was one of several high-profile attacks in
recent weeks on Russian politicians in the country's
second city.
Two allies of the Communist Duma speaker,
Gennady Seleznyov, were attacked in October. One
survived after being shot, the other was killed by a
bomb blast.
An aide to another Communist deputy was shot dead
in his apartment on October 28 and a local
government official was killed by a bomb the next
day.
Six Duma deputies have been killed in Russia since
the Duma was founded in 1993.
Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited |
