Fifteen years ago, I was working in the State Department when a prominent Russian journalist and a high-profile critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin were brutally murdered within a few weeks of each other, almost certainly by elements of the Russian security services. Our failure (my own included) to respond meaningfully to those murders is one of my biggest regrets.
Few realized in 2006 that the deaths of Anna Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko were a canary in the coalmine for how Putin would deal with critics and perceived enemies. Of course, the former KGB officer had overseen a brutal invasion of Chechnya that claimed thousands of lives. But the murder of Litvinenko in particular, which took place in the U.K., showed Putin’s readiness to wipe out perceived threats even if located in other countries.
Demonstrators hold images of slain journalist Anna Politkovskaya in Moscow, October 2012, on the sixth anniversary of her killing. | AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko
The situation has deteriorated since, with Putin overseeing the worst crackdown on Russia’s opposition, media and civil society since ..
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