The Poster at Ruminations On Russia has been commenting on the recent spate of contract hits in Russia. He writes:

I am closer to becoming a billionaire than the real killers are to being captured. And you have no idea what a gap the former is.

Well, there’s a cheap shot at Putin’s social progress. Let’s be fair, 98 bankers were blown away under Yeltsin, nearly double the current quarry. Of course, cynics will argue that there are now only half the banks there were in 1998. Or, like The Poster, allude to that fact that unsolved crime statistics are rising under Putin. To quote Mosnews

‘The number of unsolved crimes rose 25%, from 2002 to 2003, to over 1.1 million. A total of 43.3% of crimes were not solved last year. The Ombudsman noted that over 400,000 unsolved crimes fall into the category of serious and especially serious crime. In particular, 6,694 premeditated murders went unsolved in 2003′

All of which is to totally misunderstand the special nature of Russian police work, particularly when it comes to the complex business of unsolving murders. Anyone who has read a detective novel knows that the prime suspect didn’t do it. It is always some minor character who only turns up on the last page. Russian police are highly trained in detective novels and are too smart to be taken in by the obvious. Which is why Russian murders can take many years to unsolve.

A case in point is the 1991 murder of patriotic rock star Igor Talkov, effectively unsolved to this day. Talkov was shot at point blank range backstage at a concert, during a blazing row in front of at least half a dozen witnesses and with an entire television crew, assorted stagehands, make-up artists and so on in the immediate vicinity. Wisely, the police were having none of it. As Komsomolskaya Pravda reported:

Igor Malakhov, who was seen by several people firing on Talkov with a pistol during an October 6 show at St.Petersburg’s Yubileiny concert hall, came to (give himself up at) No. 38 Petrovka St., the Moscow Criminal Police Department, yesterday.

Investigator V.Zubarev has told Komsomolskaya Pravda that so far Malakhov’s legal status has not been determined, and no charges have been brought against him through lack of eyewitness accounts of the tragedy.

Another example is the recent slaying of Russia’s notorious spammer, Vardan Kushnir, who incited millions of Internet users to web rage with junk mail, nuisance phone calls and bounced mails. As reported at the time:

The public prosecutions office of Moscow’s Central administrative district has yet to establish a motive for Kushnir’s death.

This subtlety of Russian police work baffles and even infuriates Western observers. But the problem in Russia is that everyone is a conspiracy theorist and investigators must quash such rumours from the outset, as well as prevent themselves from being sidetracked. If for example, several Duma politicians are blown away in a week, there is a tendency for Russians to clamour that the killings are somehow politically inspired. Skilled investigators, however, will look for a real forensic link between such killings. In recent cases, it’s been a doorway. Which necessitates an entirely different line of investigation to the one amateur sleuths might expect.

To return to the case of Igor Talkov. Eight years after his death, a court decided that the assassin was not Igor Malakhov, the man who gave himself up, but Talkov’s manager, Valery Shlyafmann - though Valery never stood trial. Here you have a case that was unsatisfactorily unsolved, only giving rise to more conspiracy theories. Under the Russian Judicial System, a murder must be unsolved ‘beyond all reasonable doubt’ - no evidence, no witnesses, no suspects, nothing. It’s a challenging job for Moscow investigators and explains why the glib comments of Western observers are not appreciated.

Play: Igor Talkov ‘Chistye Prudi’ mp3