Sergei Nikolaevich Yushenkov (Сергей Николаевич Юшенков, 1950-2003) was a former Soviet army officer and liberal member of the State Duma, a co-chair of the Liberal Russia party, and a member of the public commission led by Sergei Kovalev that examined the 1999 Russian apartment bombings and questioned the FSB’s role. He was shot dead outside his apartment building in Moscow on April 17, 2003, the day Liberal Russia was registered as a party.

In 2004 a Moscow court convicted Mikhail Kodanev, a rival faction leader of Liberal Russia, of organizing the murder, along with accomplices. Yushenkov’s death was one of several affecting members of the Kovalev commission, including the journalist Yuri Shchekochikhin, who died later in 2003, and lawyer Mikhail Trepashkin, who was imprisoned.

Sources

• Satter, David. Darkness at Dawn: The Rise of the Russian Criminal State. Yale University Press, 2003.
• Satter, David. The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep: Russia’s Road to Terror and Dictatorship under Yeltsin and Putin. Yale University Press, 2016.

Summary entry. A fuller, document-based profile is in preparation.