A RADIO controlled bomb explosion killed the head of a commercial firm and wounded his two bodyguards in what Interfax news agency said could be a new twist in the battle for influence in Russia's cut throat business world.
It said Mr Gennady Dzen, chief executive of the Roskontraktpostavka trading firm, was carrying documents indicating he was an aide to the ultra nationalist parliamentarian, Mr Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
Police said the killing might have been "a financial criminal settling of accounts".
Interfax quoted police and interior ministry sources as saying Mr Dzen was killed as he left his Jeep style car and was about to enter his office in Mantulinskaya Street, not far from the White House government building.
Meanwhile the Kremlin said President Boris Yeltsin was recovering steadily from pneumonia and was likely to leave hospital soon. But it warned that Mr Yeltsin should not be hurried back to work because of the risk of a relapse.
"It will be in the next few days, but not at the weekend," the presidential press secretary, Mr Sergei Yastrzhembsky, told a news briefing nine days after Mr Yeltsin was taken to hospital with what doctors said were the first signs of the illness in his lungs.
Mr Yastrzhembsky declined to be more specific. Mr Yeltsin's hospital stay has already been extended once and the Kremlin is now wary of naming a day for his release.
The Prime Minister, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, reassured the West that reforms would continue. "The West should not worry. Reforms are not stopping, it's just that we don't have much money. But the desire [to reform] is great," he told reporters. "There will be no U turns in Russia."
The doctors had allowed the president to move around more and he had taken part in a family celebration of his daughter Tatyana's birthday in the Central Clinical Hospital near Moscow where he is being treated.
Mr Yastrzhembsky said he thought he would be well enough to attend a summit at the end of the month of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), which loosely groups 12 of the 15 ex soviet republics.