The killer didn't have time to catch a taxi
On Thursday, a unique incident occurred in Kazan: for the first time, a killer who had just shot his victim was captured with a weapon in his hands.

At eleven o'clock in the morning, a passer-by called the police who discovered the body of a young man near one of the houses on Voskhod Street. The capture team of the rapid response battalion of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Tatarstan, which arrived at the scene a couple of minutes later, established that the victim had received two bullets in the back of the head, and set the dog on the trail.
At the same time, the police, by their own admission, did not believe that the criminal would be caught: it seems that time had passed since the murder (later it turned out that 20 minutes), sufficient for the killer to end up on the other side of Kazan.
However, the dog handler and his shepherd dog Dzhulbars surprisingly picked up the trail and, after running a couple of hundred meters, overtook a man who was unsuccessfully trying to hail a taxi. Julbars knocked him down with a jump and pinned him to the ground, not allowing him to get the pistol, which the killer for some reason did not throw away. About five minutes passed from the moment the police were called to the arrest of the criminal.
The investigation quickly established the identities of the murdered man and the killer. The murdered man, 29-year-old Maxim Bilalov, turned out to be a cutter at the Zimushka atelier, and the killer was 26-year-old Kursk resident Ruslan Zverenkov. Until recently, he served in the special forces. He fought in “hot spots” and was awarded several times.
It is still completely unclear what could connect these people and why it was necessary to kill a person of such a peaceful profession. True, Bilalov was supplying accessories for the studio, but this is also a very weak reason for murder.
The police cannot explain the behavior of the killer, who stomped around the crime scene for 20 minutes and during this time did not “drop the gun.” It may be true that he intended to use the gun again. The fact that Zverenkov had two loaded clips for the PM allows us to think so.
All this confused the investigators so much that they now prefer to play it safe and, in conversations with journalists, once again emphasize that Zverenkov is not a criminal, but a suspect.

ANDREY Kommersant-Sheptitsky, Shamil Kommersant-IDIATULLIN, Kazan

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 18 dated 02/05/2000, page 8