Aftermath of a Murder

Strange but predictable reactions to the killing of a Russian journalist

IT HAS NOW been 14 days since Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered in Moscow. No one has been arrested for the crime, which is hardly surprising: None of the dozen other killings of journalists since Vladimir Putin became Russia's president has been solved. This one eliminated one of the fiercest and bravest critics of his government, a reporter who had tenaciously documented the depravity of Mr. Putin's war against Chechnya. We don't have any evidence implicating the Kremlin, but it's revealing to examine how Mr. Putin and his regime have behaved over the past few days.

The president's first reaction was a strange silence. While politicians, media outlets and statesmen in Russia and around the world condemned Ms. Politkovskaya's murder, no word came from Mr. Putin for three days. When finally compelled to speak, at a joint news conference in Germany with Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr. Putin offered a rote condemnation of the attack. He then disparaged Ms. Politkovskaya, saying that "the level of her influence on political life in Russia was utterly insignificant." He made the ugly suggestion that foreign-based enemies of his government were somehow behind the killing -- a claim echoed in the state-controlled press. "We have information, and it is reliable, that many people hiding from Russian justice have long been nurturing the idea of sacrificing somebody in order to create a wave of anti-Russia feeling in the world," he said.

Really? If so, Mr. Putin's enemies also must have found a way to manipulate his own security forces. It was interior ministry operatives, after all, who violently broke up a peaceful vigil in Ms. Politkovskaya's memory in the Caucasian city of Nazran on Monday. Flowers and pictures of the slain journalist were ripped from the hands of the participants and stomped on. Ekaterina Sokiryanskaya, a well-known activist of the human rights group Memorial, was punched in the face and head; she suffered a broken nose and a concussion. Three days earlier, a court ordered the closure of the Russian-Chechen Friendship Society, one of the few nongovernmental organizations still attempting to document abuses in that devastated province. On Thursday the government suspended the operations of Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and more than 90 other NGOs, saying they had not met the requirements of a controversial new registration law.

One other part of this story has played out with depressing predictability: the absence of any serious follow-up by Western leaders. At the same news conference at which Mr. Putin uttered his ugly insinuations, Ms. Merkel vowed that her government would press to complete a new partnership agreement between the European Union and Russia when Germany has the rotating E.U. presidency next year. Yesterday Mr. Putin was invited to dine with European leaders at a summit in Finland. If Ms. Politkovskaya's murder remains unsolved, will it be an obstacle to "partnership" between Russia and Europe? Sadly, Mr. Putin has been given no reason to think so.