Assassination and Investigation
Starovoitova was gunned down in the entryway of her apartment building on November 20, 1998. Her aide, Ruslan Linkov, was wounded in the attack. The murder investigation took place under the personal control of Interior Minister Sergei Stepashin, former FSB boss and future Prime Minister of Russia. In June 2005 two hitmen, Yuri Kolchin and Vitali Akishin, were convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 and 23 years of imprisonment respectively. Akishin was named as the one who pulled the trigger and Kolchin as one who had organized the attack. On September 28, 2006, Vyacheslav Lelyavin was sentenced to 11 years in prison for his role in organizing the murder. Sergey Musin, Oleg Fedosov and Igor Bogdanov are still wanted for the investigation.
According to official investigation, the murder was organized by former GRU hitmen Yuri Kolchin. However, people who ordered this assassination and paid for it have never been found. Valeria Novodvorskaya claimed that Russian state security services murdered Starovoytova to eliminate her influence on Boris Yeltsin and her resistance in appointing former KGB general Yevgeny Primakov to the Prime Minister position. Novodvorskaya suggested that FSB general Viktor Cherkesov accompanied Starovoitova just before the murder because he knew that she supposed to be killed.
Read more about this topic: Galina Starovoytova