31.   Many businessmen and public officials have been killed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, but few contract murders have been solved.

32.   Police said Baryshnikov could be the victim of an ordinary robbery, or a possible contract murder, Interfax reported.

33.   Protesters said that the union would mean a spillover of contract murders and other violence and regional conflicts into Belarus.

34.   Russia has seen a steady rise in the number of contract murders, as the increasingly assertive underworld vies to establish control over profitable companies.

35.   Scores of Russian businessmen and officials are killed in contract murders every year, according to official figures.

36.   The apparent resolution is somewhat unusual since hundreds of killings, including contract murders of businessmen and public figures, go unsolved in Russia every year.

37.   The business manager of the Russian Army Club ice hockey team was shot and killed on Friday by unidentified gunmen in what appeared to be a contract murder.

38.   The head of a federal tax inspectorate in suburban Moscow was gunned down on a railway platform in what officials on Tuesday called a contract murder.

39.   The Russian Hockey Federation elected a new president Friday to replace its former chief, who was shot and killed a month ago in an apparent contract murder.

40.   The slaying may have been a contract murder.