In light of the unraveling of the prosecution’s case in the Anna Politkovskaya trial, David Satter has a new column in Forbes detailing some of the alleged connections between the FSB and several murder cases of journalists.

The involvement of law enforcement officers in contract killings should be a momentous scandal, but the elimination of independent centers of power in Russia under Prime Minister (and former president) Vladimir Putin has created a situation in which the organs of law enforcement are integrated into the corrupt oligarchies that run the country. When the interests of those oligarchies are threatened by independent reporting, law enforcement is unable to restrain corrupt interests and is often in league with them. As a result, contract killers function as the ultimate censors.