Russian journalist found shot dead in Kiev apartment

A Russian journalist was found shot dead on Sunday in an apartment in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev police said in a statement, Sputnik reports.

"Police are establishing the circumstances of the journalist's death… Police received information about it about midnight [21:00 GMT]. When an investigative team arrived at the crime scene, a man with a gunshot wound to the head was found on the balcony. According to the preliminary forensic data, the death occurred between 8 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. It transpired that the man, born in the Russian Federation in 1962, had been living in Kiev for several years and was a head of an online media outlet," the statement said.

The statement added that during the search, the investigators found a fired case, a rubber-bullet pistol and a suicide note.

Later in the day, Ukrainian media reported that the killed man was Alexander Shchetinin, who was the founder of the Novy Region (New Region) news agency.