vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #604 / Crime watch / Reading article...

Primorye’s Prosecutorial Office has launched a criminal case into an attempted murder of the region’s Vice Governor Sergei Sopchuk who was attacked and wounded by an unidentified assailant on Monday.

Sopchuk suffered two gunshot wounds to his hand and forearm when the attacker fired several shots supposedly from a Makarov gun equipped with a silencer at Sopchuk’s office-issued Land Cruiser SUV, after the official left his cottage apartment on Zhukovsky Street in downtown Vladivostok and got in the car heading to work at around 8 am local time.

The assailant, reportedly a man wearing a camouflage outfit, escaped the scene.

Sopchuk was immediately taken to a city hospital where he underwent surgery. Currently, his condition is reported as satisfactory and his wounds are not life threatening, a statement from the regional administration said.

Sopchuk, 43, is in charge of the region’s fishing sector, agriculture, housing and communal services, as well as foreign relations.

Various motivations for the crime are being considered, with the major one being Sopchuk’s professional activities.

Meanwhile, Primorye’s Governor Sergei Darkin called the attack an attempt to ‘intimidate the authorities and people’ and expressed hope that the police will find and identify the assailant as quickly as possible, a statement from the regional administration reported.

The criminal case is being carried out by Primorye’s Prosecutorial Office’s investigating department, with the case given a status of extreme importance, news reports cited a senior aide to the department’s head Avrora Rimskaya as saying Tuesday.

In October 2006, attackers gunned down Dmitry Fotyanov, a candidate for mayor in Primorye’s town of Dalnegorsk and a businessman in the forestry industry. In June 2004, an Ussurisk Duma deputy and businessman Yuri Yemets, once director of the Russian Far East's largest liquor producer Ussurisk Balsam, was shot dead in a contract hit.