Russian Officer Jailed for Chechen Murder Is Killed

A former Russian tank commander who was paroled early after being jailed for the murder of a young Chechen woman was shot to death in central Moscow on Friday in what the police said was probably a contract killing.

The commander, Yuri D. Budanov, once a decorated army colonel, was the highest ranking officer to be punished for atrocities committed during two wars in Chechnya, a mostly Muslim region, and his early release in 2009 was met with widespread outrage there.

Though reviled in Chechnya, he became a kind of hero to Russian nationalists, and the police were put on heightened alert on Friday in case clashes erupted over his death.

Mr. Budanov had stepped outside a notary’s office for a cigarette around noon on Friday when a gunman shot him four times in the head, according to televised remarks by Vladimir Markin, a spokesman for Russia’s Investigative Committee. Mr. Budanov was killed instantly.

Mr. Markin said the gunman was seen escaping in a light-colored Mitsubishi Lancer. The vehicle was later found abandoned and partly burned, with a pistol equipped with a silencer lying on the seat, Mr. Markin said.

He offered no details about a possible motive. The Interfax news agency quoted an unnamed law enforcement official as speculating that the killing was an act of revenge.

Mr. Budanov never denied having abducted the young woman — Elza Kungayeva, who was 18 — from her Chechen village in March 2000. At his trial, he claimed that Ms. Kungayeva was a sniper, though this was never proved. He tied her up in his quarters and strangled her in a drunken rage, the court found, and ordered his men to bury her body in a nearby forest.

Russia’s second campaign in Chechnya was reaching its height at the time, and Mr. Budanov’s unit, the 160th Tank Regiment, was part of a surge of Russian forces that had swept into Chechnya to put down a violent Islamist insurgency. Human rights groups say that in the process, Russian soldiers routinely kidnapped, tortured and killed civilians.

Few soldiers were ever punished, but Mr. Budanov was an exception. In 2003, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison and stripped of his rank and awards.

For Chechens, Mr. Budanov became the personification of all the tortures endured during nearly two decades of intermittent war, and his release in 2009, four years before the end of his sentence, set off street protests in Chechnya.

Chechen officials did not react immediately on Friday to Mr. Budanov’s death. Visa Kungayev, Elza Kungayeva’s father, said the killing brought little sense of closure.

“If I had killed him myself, then justice would have been done,” Mr. Kungayev said by telephone from Norway, where he has been given asylum.

But he added, “A dog deserves a dog’s death.”