Medvedev's Signal: Don't Kill Novaya Gazeta Reporters

Original: Medvedev's Signal: Don't Kill Novaya Gazeta Reporters

Dmitry Medvedev has noted in the past that Russians tend to look for signals from their leaders. But, since the Russian president doesn't come from the siloviki -- he is a former law professor, not a retired KGB or military officer -- nor from politics, he is not as noted as his predecessors for skillfully communicating through gesture.

So what was today all about? Why did Medvedev give Novaya Gazeta editor k" href="http://cpj.org/2001/01/russia-journalists-killers-sought-to-intimidate-hi.php">Igor Domnikov, killed in 2000, Yuri Shchekochikhin, who died in 2003 from a mysterious illness, and, most dramatically, Anna Politkovskaya, slain in 2006.

There had been something of an interregnum since the November 2006 nuclear poisoning murder of Alexander Litvinenko. But in January, that apparent intermission ended. Human rights lawyer Stanislaw Markelov was shot in the back of the head by a killer on a crowded Moscow street in daylight, along with Vladimir Putin, wh