Russian police probe spy chief assassination

Police were investigating multiple theories today following the murder of a former top Russian spy and his wife, who were gunned down in Moscow.

Colonel General Anatoly Trofimov, a 65-year-old former deputy chief of the Federal Security Service under President Boris Yeltsin, was shot in his 4X4 vehicle last night. He died at the scene.

His 28-year-old wife died in hospital this morning. Their daughter, who was also in the car, was reportedly unharmed.

The car was fired on from a small car by gunmen armed with automatic weapons. Witnesses saw a masked man in a leather jacket and black hair run up to Trofimov and fire several times before fleeing.

Moscow law enforcement officials, said the attack was a contract killing related to Trofimov’s business dealings. However, Colonel Alexander Litvinenko, a former top official in FSB, successor to the KGB, said the killing was political.

Trofimov, who also served as head of the FSB’s Moscow branch, was sacked by Yeltsin in 1997 following an examination by federal accountants for “gross violations and flaws in his work”.