MOSCOW, Oct 18: Russian leaders slammed the country’s law enforcement agencies on Friday after the governor of the gold-producing Magadan region was shot dead on a busy Moscow street, the second killing of a political figure in the capital in less than two months.

Valentin Tsvetkov was gunned down during the early morning rush hour on Novy Arbat, one of Moscow’s busiest thoroughfares, as he got out of his car and prepared to enter a federal building in which his administration has a permanent office, police said.

The slaying, believed to be related to Tsvetkov’s links to the region’s gold-mining industry, follows the murder on August 21 of State Duma deputy Vladimir Golovlev near his home in a north Moscow suburb.

Though Russia has seen several political killings in the turbulent years since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Tsvetkov is the first regional governor to be murdered.

The killing triggered demands for reform of Russia’s law enforcement system, with President Vladimir Putin placing Interior Minister Boris Gryzlov and Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov personally in charge of the investigation.

Putin described the killing as a “crime against the state,” Interfax quoted Ustinov as saying.

Gryzlov said that investigators would be sent to Magadan on Saturday as “we believe the roots of the crime are to be found there.”—Reuters