The new czar

Vladimir Putin has described the Russian journalist Anna
Politkovskaya, killed recently in a 1990’s style mafia hit, as
an “extremely insignificant” writer, according to  the Washington
Post.  The term “immensely inconvenient” would be much closer
to Putin’s genuine attitude toward reporters such as Politkovskaya,
who dare to reveal the ugly realities of the war in Chechnya.
Mr. Putin and his KGB [...]