The man was killed by three shots aimed at the side window of his SUV. “According to the preliminary version, this murder was planned and ordered,” the source told TASS. The perpetrator was waiting for the soldier’s car and before that the colonel was being watched.
According to TASS, a group of investigators and criminologists are trying to clarify the crime, who are questioning witnesses and trying to find out the motive. The shot colonel served as deputy chief (staff) of one of the military units.
The murder took place on Wednesday around nine o’clock in the morning (08:00 CEST) in the village of Melenki near Solnečnogorsk, about 65 kilometers northwest of the Russian capital. The killer was waiting for the officer at the entrance to the village. As soon as he saw the victim’s car, he started shooting with a gun.
He fired a total of eight nine-millimeter bullets – and at least three times he hit the window and the door of the car driven by 44-year-old Klenkov. The driver collapsed dead on the steering wheel as the car continued to drive and crashed into a fence near a house. Investigators assume that the killers were also riding in a car when they opened fire on the colonel’s car.
The Važnije istorii server, banned by the Russian authorities, claims that the shot officer was the deputy commander of the special forces training center of the Russian military intelligence GRU. According to the portal, Klenkov ordered the delivery of food to the GRU staff and also visited the polyclinic near the GRU building. No media reports evidence of any connection between this murder and the war against Ukraine, the BBC noted on its Russian-language website.
