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Even though many of us have fantasized about certain journalist biting the big one, this whole thing stinks of a Commie KGB plot. I hope someone gets to the bottom of this before it becomes fashionable to kill bloggers and such in this country.

Everyone in the West is calling it a KGB plot, but in Russia they have a very good idea who did it.

According to Russian analytist Vladimir Pozner, the murder of Anna Politkovskaya unfortunately means little to most of the Russian people. She was a semi-popular journalist (among liberals) about 5-10 years ago. Today, only one out of five can even recognize her name. Also, public opinion polls and the stock market both show that the Russian nation has largely gone on with business as usual even after the murder of Vice Finance Minister Andrei Kozlov just a few weeks ago. It is a very sad truth, but Russians are busy getting on with their lives, and they are used to prominent people getting killed now and then, and they don't have as much time as the Washington Post to stress about these things. I know this sounds cold and rude, but that's what it is. Western media reaction has been absolutely overblown and has often accused the Russia government without any evidence of being involved in this assassination. No one mentions that many more journalists were murdered during the "liberal and democratic" Yeltsin years than during Putin's administration.

The two main suspects likely are:

1. Colonel Yuri D. Budanov found guilty of murdering a Chechen girl. He was exposed due to the reporting of Anna. His commander threatened to take care of anybody who harmed his colonel. The colonel is now in prison.

2. Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov. Anna was doing a report on Kadyrov at the time of her murder.

Seems like Putin had the hit done, but had it done by one of the nationalist or neo-Stalinist orgs.