NYC Letter: Comrade Putin And His Critics

When critics decry America as a fascist state from the comfort and safety of America, or weep over the imagined attenuation of American freedoms, it is salutary to have a look at the real thing.

ANNA STEPANOVNA POLITKOVSKAYA
30 August 1958 – 7 October 2006
Shot Dead On Vladimir Putin's Birthday

CROSS PUTIN AND DIE

October 15, 2006 (Telegraph) - When [Anna] Politkovskaya was gunned down in the lift of her apartment block in Lesnaya Street in central Moscow, she became the 13th Russian journalist to be murdered for daring to criticise President Putin and his policies since he came to power in 2000. The investigative journalist's "crime" had been a long and relentless campaign, often, it has to be said, to the exasperation of even her editor, exposing corruption in the Russian army and its brutal reign of terror in Chechnya.

... Two years ago, en route to cover the Beslan school siege (which Putin had sought to conceal for as long as possible from the Russian public), she had to be taken off the aeroplane and rushed to hospital after drinking a cup of poisoned tea. Mysteriously, the tea cup disappeared before it could be analysed. On another occasion, after a series of articles and two books revealing the atrocities being committed in Russia's name, FSB agents kidnapped her, held her captive in a 20ft deep pit for three days, and threatened her with rape and murder. Last year, after yet another anti-Putin article, she received so many death threats that she was forced to flee to Vienna for several months.

What probably sealed Politkovskaya's fate was her final, scorching report of the brutal torture meted out to young Chechens by Russian-backed forces in the northern Caucasus. ... Politkovskaya never finished her article. Two days after she wrote the opening paragraphs, she was shot twice in the heart, once in the arm and once in the head with a 9.9 Markarov pistol, the Russian hitman's weapon of choice. Her assassin, a young man in a baseball cap, was captured on CCTV. But no one in Russia, least of all its press corps, seriously believes he will ever be caught.

In 2001, the murders [to discourage the press] began. Eduard Markevich, the editor and publisher of the newspaper Novy Reft, known for its strident criticism of local officials, was shot in the back. Two years later, Valery Ivanov, editor-in-chief of Tolyatinskoye Obozreniye, was shot in the head eight times after his newspaper exposed controversial business deals linked to organised crime and government corruption. His colleague, Alexei Sidorov, took over as editor and, 18 months later, he too was killed – stabbed several times with an ice-pick and left to die.

Perhaps the most notorious murder, however, was that of Paul Khlebnikov, the editor of the Russian edition of the US business magazine Forbes. His punishment for exposing the wealth of Russia's business elite was a bullet in the back of the head.

Now that, gentle reader, is how a fascist state is run.