Activists In Moscow Mark Anniversary Of Journalist's Murder In Kalmykia

Members of Russia's opposition Yabloko party gathered today to mark the 12-year anniversary of the murder of journalist Larisa Yudina, RFE/RL's Russian Service reports.

The activists picketed the building of the permanent representative mission in Moscow of the Russian republic of Kalmykia.

Yudina, the chief editor of the newspaper "Soviet Kalmykia Today" and the leader of Yabloko's branch in Kalmykia, was murdered in the republic's capital, Elista, on June 7, 1998, while investigating official corruption. She was 52.

The picketers demanded that the Kalmyk authorities name the people involved in the murder, including those who ordered the killing.

Yabloko's leader Sergei Mitrokhin said at the gathering that investigators know the names of those who ordered Yudina's assassination but hesitate to make them public.

Yudina's newspaper was Kalmykia's only newspaper to criticize the republic's president, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov.