Vladimir Putin's Russian thugocracy is thriving, which is more than can be said for its latest victims.
Human rights attorney Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova were each shot in the head on Monday by a man wearing military fatigues and using a gun with a silencer -- in the middle of the afternoon, on a busy Moscow street, a half mile from the Kremlin.
Mr. Markelov had held a press conference that day opposing the early release of Col. Yury Budanov, who had been convicted of strangling a teenage girl in the Chechen Republic. Ms. Baburova was affiliated with Russia's Novaya Gazeta, a courageous publication that has been exposing the unconstrained wickedness of Prime Minister Putin's reign of terror.
Add two to the never-ending body count of Putin's opponents.
Baburova is at least the 15th journalist to be slain since Putin took power, and no one has been held accountable in any of the cases, reminds The Washington Post.
Dissident former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned. So was Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, who somehow survived. Poisoning also was used on another opposition lawyer who fell ill in Strasbourg, France. And last week in Vienna, a Chechen dissident was murdered on the street. Two shots to the head.
It's as if Stalin were still alive.
