Ded Dead: the assassination of Russian crime boss Aslan Usoyan (‘Ded Khasan’), Mark Galeotti. In Moscow's Shadows, 16 January 2013.
News is just breaking that Russian (actually Kurdish Yezidi from Georgia) crime boss Aslan Usoyan (‘Ded Hasan’ or ‘Ded Khasan’ — ‘Grandfather Hassan’) was shot and killed last night in Moscow. Apparently a sniper took him down (some say with a head shot, but probably multiple hits) as he was leaving a restaurant (initial accounts vary, but it was almost certainly the Stary faeton on Bolshaya Nikitskaya, known as his favored hang-out). He died in intensive care at the Botkin hospital.

While the details of the hit will emerge soon enough, the fundamentals are clear — another classic Russian mob killing, reflecting rising tensions within the national underworld as well as the prosecution of a long-running feud(s). The 75-year-old Usoyan was one of the foremost leaders within the Russian underworld, but at a time when that underworld is going through a process of realignment due to a number of forces, not least the increasing flow of Afghan heroin through the country. This was the third assassination attempt in his underworld career, after one in Sochi in 1998 and then another in Moscow in 2010. The latter was a result of his running feud with Georgian mobster Tariel Oniani (‘Taro’) who is currently in prison but still managing his extensive crime empire from behind bars. His feud with Oniani dates back at least to 2007 and has been one of the defining pressures within the Russian underworld.