European Commission spokesperson Ton van Lierop told RIA Novosti that the EU supports press freedom, and is greatly alarmed by any attacks against journalists.
Early on Friday Ilyas Shurpayev, a journalist from the south Russian republic of Daghestan working at Russia's state-run Channel One, was found stabbed and strangled in his rented Moscow apartment.
Later in the day Gadzhi Abashilov, the head of Daghestan's state-run television station, was killed when unidentified gunmen opened fire on his car in the volatile North Caucasus province.
Investigators have linked Abashilov's murder to his professional activities, but the motivation behind Shurpayev's murder remains uncertain.
On the day before he was killed, Shurpayev mentioned in his final post on his Live Journal blog that local independent paper Nastoyashcheye Vremya had blacklisted him.
The former chief editor of the paper, Andrei Melamedov, confirmed the claim to RIA Novosti, saying both Shurpayev and Abashilov had been put on the list in late 2007.
"The general director of the newspaper, Rizvan Rizvanov, did in fact hand me a list of people whose names he categorically did not want to see in the newspaper," Melamedov said.
