21 June 2011
Antanoly Bitkov
Knife attack
The editor in chief of the Kolyma Plyus TV channel, Anatoliy Bitkov, has been killed in Magadan, Gazprom-owned but editorially independent Russian radio station Ekho Moskvy reported.
The body of Bitkov with multiple stab wounds was found in his flat, the official spokesman for the Magadan Region Directorate of the Russian Investigations Committee, Vyacheslav Kanochkin, told Ekho Moskvy. Investigators are considering several theories.
They do not rule out that Bitkov may have been killed because of his professional activities, Kanochkin said. Bitkov's colleagues, though, do not think that his murder was related to his professional activities, Ekho Moskvy reported earlier on the same day. The director-general of Kolyma Plyus, Mikhail Tolstov, was quoted as saying that Bitkov had never received any threats.
