The Russia Journal
July 17 2004

One more newspaper editor killed in Moscow

MOSCOW – Russian and foreign journalists have become an endangered
species in Moscow as two editors have been brutally murdered in as
many weeks in the Russian capital.

The latest victim of the on-going undeclared war against media
representatives is Paila Peloyan – the editor-in-chief of the
Moscow-based Armenian Pereulok, who was found dead on the Moscow
Outer Ring Road (MKAD) between 2 am and 3 am earlier today.

The Armenian Pereulok is a Russian-language journal which is
published and distributed among ethnic Armenian Diaspora living
mainly in the capital and its outlying regions.

The news of the murder jotted Moscow law-enforcement officials into
action as a group of investigators, headed by Alexander Krokhmal,
first deputy prosecutor in the city’s Prosecutor’ s Office, was
dispatched to the murder scene for preliminary investigation.

According to law-enforcement agencies, Peloyan died from a series
injuries, including several knife stabs in the chest, at the 43rd
kilometer on the MKAD in the Southwest Administrative District. The
Cheryomushinsky prosecutor office has opened a criminal case into the
murder. The prosecutors have said they are considering all possible
motives for the murder, including Pelyan’s job as journalist.

Peloyan’s death came only several days after the heinous murder of
another journalist, Paul Klebnikov, the editor of Forbes Russia, on
July 9. Klebnikov, a U.S. citizen of Russian descent, was gunned down
by unidentified assassins as he exited his office in the northern
part of the Russian capital. The assassins and those who ordered the
murder are still at large.

These two senseless killings have once again put the issue of
journalists’ safety in Russia back to the agenda and raised founded
concerns among representatives of the Fourth Estate. This is not
because killing journalists is a rarity in Moscow – and, Russia at
large, but two heinous murders of journalists in less than 10 days in
a city that is not at war, is something unusual, even by Russian
standards.