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Mikhail Gorbachev, the face of perestroika and bringer of democracy to the former USSR, was apoplectic this week in describing the danger Novaya Gazeta correspondent Anna Politskovaya's murder (on Vladimir Putin's 54th birthday) represents for nascent - many would say stillborn - Russian democracy.

Gorbachev must of course be much more aware than non-Russians of:

- The 13 other murders of journalists since Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin became Russia's president;

- The murder of two very prominent Russian bankers in just the last few days, and the coincidence that the bank that employs one of them (the other was the Russian Central Bank Deputy Director) is

(a) about to list on the London Stock Exchange,
(b) has just concluded a synergy deal with Germany's Dresdner Bank, and
(c) has bought a 5% stake in EADS, the European aerospace giant and owner of Airbus;

- The 2003 arrest of Russia's richest man, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. His arrest came hot on the heels of his acquisition of the prestigious Moskovskiye Novosti newspaper, and his hiring of a leading investigative journalist highly critical of President Vladimir Putin;

- The July 2003 arrest of Khodorkovsky's fellow Yukos shareholder and business partner Platon Lebedev. Many saw that arrest as a clear warning to Mr Khodorkovsky not to meddle in the upcoming elections;

- The 2000 arrest of Vladimir Gusinsky, owner of the largest independent television network in the country, NTV, just a few months after Putin's election. NTV was shut down in April 2001

- The close-down of TV-6, another independent television station where many NTV journalists sought refuge after NTV was closed down, It was snuffed out by the Kremlin in 2002;

- The mid-2000 flight from Russia of Boris Berezovsky, controller of ORT, Russia's Channel one, the largest network in the country. Berezovsky originally supported Putin's rise to power, but became a critic. Prosecutors later charged him with a series of crimes, including not repaying massive debts and loans. He is now fighting extradition to Putingrad;

- The murder earlier this month of Enver Ziganshin, the chief engineer for the Anglo-Russian oil producer TNK-BP - perhaps as a warning to BP, they say. Mr. Ziganshin's killing took place shortly after Russia's government jeopardized Shell's multibillion-dollar oil-development investment in the Sakhalin II fields by revoking a critical license - on the grounds that Shell had caused significant harm to the environment. Laughing out loud;

- The `Before' and `After' faces of US- backed Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko, who some say was a victim of poisoning. His electoral "loss" to a Russian-backed candidate was voided by the Ukrainian Supreme Court.

- The 2004 post-Beslan (middle-school massacre) re-arrangement: Putin argued that corruption in the regions had contributed to the attack. He abolished the direct election of governor for each of Russia's 89 regions, excluding Chechnya. Putin began appointing governors;

- The 6,000-odd former KGB officials who hold key positions in the Russian government at a time when power is increasingly centralized in Moscow;

- The (clearly) fraudulent elections and widespread repression in post-Soviet republics, such as Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan;

- The squeeze laid on Georgia during the past week and the harrassment of Georgians living in Russia, regarding which Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili told WSJ:

"Ethnic Georgians in Russia) were subjected to a form of ethnic targeting not seen in Europe since the Balkans in the 1990s ... Hundreds are being deported; business owners are being harassed; schoolchildren are being forcibly registered with local police; women are being gratuitously tested for sexually transmitted diseases ... "

Russia has unilaterally severed air, rail, sea, land and postal links with Georgia.

The ostensible issue is territorial disputes between Georgia and its neighbour over the provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The catalyst for the conflagration was Georgia's detention (and release to the Russians) of Russian spies.

The real meat in the issue is the success of Georgia's democracy, its overtures to NATO and its burgeoning relations with the US:

"In just three short years, my country has been transformed from a gangster-run economic and political basket case into a budding democracy with one of the world's fastest-growing economies. The World Bank recently lauded Georgia as the No. 1 reformer in the world and the least corrupt transitional democracy. Just last month NATO admitted Georgia into a new stage of membership talks

... (D)emocracy can be contagious."

US President George W Bush, who the esteemed western media are ever ready to lampoon for mangling language, probably nailed the concerns of democratic states when he outlined for Putin at the 2005
summit meeting in Slovakia the importance of

"a rule of law and protection of minorities, a free press, and a viable political opposition".

Very little of which seems to be in place or on the upswing in Russia at the moment.

Meanwhile, Russia's centralised and now state-controlled single oil and gas company has become an oil-producing giant. Another take on the Khodorkovsky arrest is that (per Jonathan Weiler in the Asia Times):

"(I)n the months before , Yukos and British Petroleum had agreed in principle to a merger that would have made the new entity perhaps the third-largest oil company in the world. Observers at the time suggested that Putin found such a possibility - the loss of control over a significant portion of a critical strategic resource - unacceptable."

Russia is now Europe's largest supplier of natural gas and oil.

That is: the single monolithic entity that is the corporatized natural-resource sector of Russia, that Putin's government directly or indirectly controls under the guise of law, is Europe's largest supplier of natural gas and oil.

It is also tremendous buddies with Hugo Chavez. And with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Russia is building the latter's nuclear plant, and is plans to build a gas pipeline from Venezuela to the southern tip of South America.