POLICE ARREST THIRD SUSPECT IN CASE NEWSPAPER EDITOR MURDER.

Police yesterday arrested a third suspect, identified only as Shanukov, in connection with the murder of the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Sovetskaya Kalmykiya Segodnya [Soviet Kalmykia Today], Larisa Yudina. (Russian agencies, June 17) Two other suspects are already in detention. One is Sergei Vaskin, a former aide to the president of Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov. The other is the presidential envoy to Volgograd Oblast, Tyurba Boskhomdzhiev. Yudina’s body was found on the outskirts of Elista, capital of Kalmykia, on June 8. She had been stabbed to death. Her murder created a political uproar since she was not only editor of Kalmykia’s only opposition newspaper but also a leader of the local branch of Grigory Yavlinsky’s liberal Yabloko movement. Her husband told police that, on the night of her death, Yudina went to meet an informant who had promised to give her information thought to concern corruption in Ilyumzhinov’s government. Her newspaper had been under such strong pressure from the republic government that she had since 1994 been forced to have it printed in neighboring Volgograd Oblast. There, too, the regional authorities and the printing press were reportedly visited by officials from Kalmykia, who offered substantial bribes and threatened unspecified reprisals in an unsuccessful effort to stop production of the paper. (RTR, June 11) Yabloko has called on the Duma’s watchdog Accounting Chamber to conduct an investigation into the use of budget funds in Kalmykia. (RTR, June 11) Unfazed, President Ilyumzhinov has announced his intention of running for president of Russia in 2000. (Itar-Tass, June 14)

MOSCOW HURLING MORE EPITHETS AT LATVIA.