Gears grating in Russia

The left-liberal daily La Repubblica writes that the acquittal of the four defendants in the Politkovskaya trial hardly comes as a surprise in a country "where the majority of its seventy to eighty most powerful men were trained by the KGB. They receive extensive training … in how to order the physical elimination of an opponent and keep it secret. … We know that in Russia irksome journalists, as we cursorily define them in our newspapers, or in other words those who dare to raise their voices against the regime run the risk of being shot. … That Russian President Dmitry Medvedev met the publisher of the daily Novayja Gazeta [for which journalist für Anna Politkovskaya worked] to express concern about the murder of journalist Anastasia Barburova offers a glimmer of hope. According to observers this could be a sign that the gears are grating in the Medvedev-Putin tandem."

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