A Russian judge who jailed neo-Nazis for hate crimes was shot dead this morning in the stairwell of his Moscow apartment building as he left for work.
Eduard Chuvashov (47), was shot in the chest and head and died on the spot outside his flat near the centre of Moscow, the Prosecutor General's investigative unit said in a statement.
Possible links between his work and his murder are being examined, the statement said.
Mr Chuvashov last week sentenced two members of the far-right "Ryno Gang" to 10 years in prison. Convicted of killing 20 people of "non-Slavic" appearance, they triumphantly posted videos of their brutal killings online.
"Everything will be done so that the organisers and perpetrators of this cynical murder be found and punished," President Dmitry Medvedev said, Interfax news agency reported.
An unnamed law enforcement source quoted by Russian news agencies said neo-nationalists were likely to be behind the murder. That would make it the second high-profile killing to be carried out by neo-nationalists in Russia in as many years.
Activists warn that increasing xenophobia and a corrupt police force allow far-right groups to prosper.
At least 60 people were killed in Russia last year in hate crimes, and 306 were injured, according to SOVA, a non-governmental organisation that tracks racist violence in the country.
"It could be retribution from far-right groups," Allison Gill from the Moscow branch of Human Rights Watch (HRW) said of Chuvashov's death. She added that judges, lawyers, rights defenders and journalists have "now become the clear targets" of neo-nationalists in Russia.
Mr Chuvashov also jailed at least nine ultra-nationalists from the Russian fascist group known as the "White Wolves" in February. Mostly teenagers, the group were found guilty of 11 murders. The victims were dark-skinned migrants from Central Asia, Several of them had been bludgeoned to death.
In January 2009, human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and opposition journalist Anastasia Baburova were killed near the Kremlin. A Moscow court blamed their murders on nationalists.
Mr Markelov had represented the mother of an anti-fascist campaigner in 2006 who said her son was killed by neo-Nazis.
The one-year commemoration of their deaths in January drew 1,000 people, who demanded a crackdown on neo-nationalists, an unusually large crowd for a Moscow demonstration.