Vladimir Putin has been Russia’s president since 2000. During his tenure, 13 Russian journalists have been the victims of contract-style murders. None of the cases ever has been solved or, as far as anyone outside the Kremlin can determine, even investigated seriously and with good intentions.

Ann Politkovskaya is the latest journalist victim. She had been a sharp critic of Putin and reported extensively on issues such as corruption and human rights abuses under the country’s six-year president. According to Trudy Rubin of the Philadelphia Inquirer, a close follower of foreign affairs, Politkovskaya was the Bob Woodward and the Seymour Hersh of Russian journalism “rolled into one, in a country where investigative reporting can be fatal.”

Putin in the 1990s was the head of the FSB – the successor organization of the notorious KGB spy-and-punish agency that created such deep dread and fear in the Soviet Union. He has the connections, the resources and every opportunity to locate who has been killing the journalists. Yet he has scarcely addressed the problem, except to say at one point that Politkovskaya’s work was of “very minor” importance.

His only reference to her death was to say it was of concern mainly to human-rights circles in the West. He did indicate in a conversation with U.S. president George W. Bush that he intended to launch an investigation into the slaying. Nobody conversant with the growing grip on the throat of his nation and its people expects anything to happen.

While Bush and the United States continue to project Russia as an ally of sorts, Putin has successfully muzzled dissent in Russia under his self-professed effort to impose a “dictatorship of law.” Russians and the people that nation deals with are understanding more by the day just what he has in mind, and it is not fostering movement toward anything resembling an open and just society.

The murder of the widely respected Anna Politkovskaya is more than just a death for a “meddling journalist.” President Bush is not likely to be highly appreciative of Bob Woodward and his penetrating reporting, but Woodward does not live in the kind of fear that Politkovskaya and her colleagues do, or did. Along with virtually everything else, Putin controls the media of his country and woe be to those who step beyond the party line.

With friends like Putin and his Russia hierarchy, does the United States need any more enemies?