Princess Michael of Kent, a Russian entrepreneur and the perils of doing business in Putin's Russia Mrs Kravchenko, an economist, was left reeling by the news of the murder - news that she first heard when she happened to switch on the radio. But she said she was determined to prevent his death becoming yet another unresolved contract killing. "I want to speak out now, because I feel people have to hear and feel that they need to be more united, and look out for their loved ones," she told The Sunday Telegraph at her home in Moscow. She said that alongside her husband Vyacheslav, 70, they had been comforted by the huge outpouring of grief at his death. The Prince and Princess were both said to be "very distressed" at the news - and Mrs Kravchenko thanked the royal couple for their condolences. Indeed, Prince Michael of Kent, who has for decades maintained strong business links with Russia, understands well the country and its customs. Prince Michael's grandmother was Grand Duchess Helen Vladimirovna, a member of the Romanov family, who spent endless hours talking to her grandson about her native country and inspired him to learn Russian. He bears a striking resemblance to the last Tsar, Nicholas II, who was a cousin of his grandparents. Indeed, when the Romanov's bodies - discovered in 1979 - were subjected to DNA testing in the 1990s, Prince Michael was among those asked to provide a sample to confirm their identity. They are a very resilient people and they have suffered a great deal under communism and before that. I admire their steel and resolution and resilience," he told The Sunday Telegraph in an interview in 2010. And, of course, frequent visitor Prince Michael was sometimes accompanied by his wife - glamorous German-born aristocrat Marie Christine. But Princess Michael, as she became upon her 1978 marriage, never felt accepted by the Royal family. She recalled Lord Mountbatten telling the Queen about "how I was descended from Charlemagne, this king, that queen. He laid it on a bit thick. She has never forgotten the Queen's response: "Well Dickie, she sounds a bit too grand for us." Given that the Kents do not receive a salary from the Queen, they have to work. The Prince has acted as a business consultant, while the Princess has written three books on European royalty and worked as an interior designer. It was through her design interests that the 67-year-old Princess first met Mikhail Kravchenko. The Princess was invited to present an award at the "Week of Decor" exhibition in October 2005 - an event which Mr Kravchenko, who owned the March 8 furniture company, was sponsoring. With a striking red jacket draped over her shoulders, the Princess clearly caught the eye of the much younger Russian. Prince Michael was left to stand behind, sidelined by the handsome entrepreneur. Mr Kravchenko's wife and six-year-old daughter had been killed in a car accident in 2001, and since then, despite his enduring grief, he had been noted as one of Russia's most eligible bachelors. Six months later, the Princess was yet again in the company of Mr Kravchenko - although this time, her husband was nowhere to be seen. The pair were in Venice, holding hands as they strolled through the piazzas and snuggling up for a gondola ride. She checked in at the Cipriani hotel under the name Mrs Green, spending four nights in a £2,200-a-night suite with interconnecting rooms. Shortly after the photos of the pair were published worldwide, Princess Michael announced that she had designed a collection of furniture, in collaboration with Mr Kravchenko, with the Russian elite in mind. She's not a specialist in furniture, but she knows everything there is to know about style. She was advising me on the shape of the sofas," Mr Kravchenko explained. Because of our Soviet past, we don't have style experts. I trust the princess. She has incredibly good taste. When photographs appeared, the Princess was forced to deny that their relationship was anything more than a meeting of business minds. I'm a very tactile person - I do it all the time," she said. Don't forget I'm not English. English people maybe don't behave like we Europeans do. Mr Kravchenko said she was a "noble, beautiful person" - but that theirs was a working relationship. But Marina Sherstyuk, who worked for Mr Kravchenko, admitted that there may have been sparks between them. I can say that perhaps there was some mutual sympathy between them. The thing is that he had charisma of such might that no woman, or indeed man, could stay indifferent to him. Certainly the publicity did neither any harm. Mr Kravchenko's business continued to expand - he had 250 stores in Russia at the time of his death, and was worth tens of millions of pounds - and Princess Michael was, perhaps, able to show her husband that she, too, could enjoy the company of younger, attractive figures. The Prince has been noted for appearing at events with a string of society beauties, including a Danish businesswoman, an American artist and a British writer. And it did not seem to harm the Kent's relationship. Two weeks after Venice, both the Prince and Princess were pictured with Mr Kravchenko in Russia, enjoying a luxury river cruise. A year later, in May 2007, they were all together again in Moscow, when the Kents attended the Peter the Great award ceremony. But their joint business venture did not last for long. A former Kravchenko associate said that the project was quietly shelved, owing to the high costs of the design. "In the end it wasn't something dramatic," she explained. But this was a royal project and he felt the fees were on a royal level - and he wasn't ready for that. In 2008 the Princess was once again in Moscow, at an event on Leninsky Prospect - where Mr Kravchenko had lived for many years. She inquired after him, but he managed to reach the salon only when the event was already over. Indeed, Mr Kravchenko was a man in demand, whose business was booming. Unlike many of Russia's elite, Mr Kravchenko was a free spirit, travelling to extreme destinations such as Papua New Guinea where he spent time with a tribe of cannibals. In Cameroon he contracted malaria while living in a village, and almost died of the disease. Back in Russia, he lived without private security - highly unusual for a businessman of his stature. Mr Kravchenko's Mercedes always contained a sleeping bag and diving gear - ready for spontaneous trips out into the tundra or at sea. He had been spending time at a comparatively modest house 25 miles from the Kremlin, in a community called Peredelki, close to a famous Soviet-era writers' colony where Boris Pasternak wrote Dr Zhivago. It is also mentioned in John Le Carre's The Russia House. And it was here that he was murdered, only yards from his home, in the early hours of Sunday morning. Two cars which had been lying in wait blocked his vehicle, while gunmen fired into his body. With the trademark efficiency of a professional assassin, he was then dragged out of his car and shot in the head. His mother told The Sunday Telegraph of her distress at hearing of his death on the radio. "The radio announcers already knew his name," she said, her voice crackling from emotion. I think parents should be the ones who are told it first, not to hear it like this. She nevertheless demanded to see the son she raised during a peripatetic life in Siberia, Kazakhstan, the Urals and Ukraine. I then said that I must be left alone with him, before any make-up is put on for the funeral, to say goodbye to him properly. They told me that this would be scary. She paused, and said softly: "You know, it was not scary at all. How could it be scary? He is my son. On Saturday night, outside Mr Kravchenko's house, a candlelit shrine had sprung up, with flowers and a single cigar - of which he was notoriously fond. A makeshift wooden platform stood so mourners in the Russian tradition could sit and perhaps share a vodka as they remember the recently departed. "It's strange," said one resident. His name was familiar to me and I even own some of his furniture in my house. But thought we evidently lived in the same compound, I'd never met him. A middle-aged woman who lived down the street said: "People here don't want to talk about this. Even if anyone saw anything suspicious, I'm not sure they would tell the police. Why risk another visit from these monsters who did this? Friends of Mr Kravchenko have blamed his murder on a business dispute, with rival furniture manufacturers behind the hit. Business magazine Expert claimed that several days before his death Mr Kravchenko had complained that regional furniture makers were ripping off his designs and selling cut-price furniture. In Russia, even minor disputes can escalate unpredictably: at one point Mr Kravchenko was at loggerheads with a police general after refusing to give him the four sofas he had demanded. Dmitry Potapenko, 42, a friend and management consultant, said there had been three arson attacks on his factories. Mikhail had problems with the law-enforcement organisations. You've got to understand that people were after his assets. These people knew what they were doing. The thing is, Mikhail was like a child. He was so peaceful that he tried to make agreements with people by peaceful ways - this is why he has now paid such a high price for it. Roksolana Chernoba, editor-in-chief of DEI Disillusionist magazine and a close friend, put it more succinctly. If he was to be born in any European country, say in the UK, he would have been the subject of national pride. But he was born in Russia, and got a bullet in his head. Contract killings are on the rise again in Russia to a scale not seen since the bloody 1990s, in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse when all state assets were up for grabs. Police sources have indicated that in 2010 there were two contract killings a day in Moscow and its surrounding region alone - a figure believed to have risen since. Police said they were still investigating Mr Kravchenko's murder, and could not comment. And at his funeral on Wednesday, the mourners were almost all too distraught to speak. Throngs of 30-something women wept at his flower-filled grave as the storm clouds gathered overhead. His shell-shocked parents and sister stood at the tomb, where he was laid to rest alongside his wife and daughter. Mr Kravchenko had spent hours on end in that cemetery, reading fairytales to his deceased family. He had placed bird boxes in the three silver birch trees above the graves. There were so many people coming, flowers were everywhere. Such words were said about him, with the feeling of such love - I can only now say thank you to everyone for expressing it," said his mother. And they were, for some hours they were coming up, each with their own story about friendship or work with Misha, and they all wanted to be heard. I didn't feel any threats, to us, his family, and I did not know about any threats to Misha. We lived our quiet lives, and there was no feeling of the clouds gathering above his head. But evidently the clouds had been gathering. Grigory Pototski, a sculptor, made the main graveside tribute. "A great man has left us, a great friend," he said. Evil is powerful but it won't overtake all the kindness that this man left behind him. Thank you for your life and lie in peace. Over a thousand miles away, perhaps a princess was making the same prayer.