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More than two weeks have passed since the murder of human rights defender Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova. What has been done to investigate the crime and bring the persons responsible to justice?

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has ordered his staff to revise a controversial bill which would loosen the definition of treason. The draft legislation, earlier backed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, has been met with public outrage and criticism. Opponents say the bill harkens back to the days of Soviet repression, and could potentially allow authorities to brand any government critic a traitor. A group of prominent Russian rights activists defines the bill as “legislation in the spirit of Stalin and Hitler”.

Following large amounts of criticism of President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s silence in the wake of the murders of Stanislav Markelov and Anastasia Baburova, Medvedev has finally responded and held a meeting with Novaya Gazeta Editor-in-Chief Dmitri Muratov and former Soviet President and Novaya shareholder Mikhail Gorbachev.

Russian youth of service age have strong reasons to be unwilling to go to the Russian army, neither by conscription nor under contracts.

While the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has called upon Russian authorities to protect journalists, the journalists themselves have appealed to the authorities for permission to carry weapons.

Over the last few days, vigils, silent protests and commemorative meetings for Stanislav Markelov and Anastasiya Baburova, the two most recent victims of politically motivated murders, have taken place all over the Russian Federation. The participants demand a thorough, transparent and impartial investigation into the murders, and for the perpetrators to be brought to trial. Effective steps for the protection of human rights in the Russian Federation must also be taken.

The start of criminal proceedings against the alleged mastermind of the murder of Novaya Gazeta’s journalist Igor Domnikov on April 22, 2009 brings hope that a precedent of putting to trial not only executors but the masterminds of crimes against journalists will be at last created in the Russian Federation. If the case goes all the way to court, it will mark a very meaningful step towards ending impunity for the perpetrators of crimes of the kind.

A lawyer for the family of a Chechen woman murdered by former army Colonel Yury Budanov was shot dead Monday in central Moscow after holding a news conference decrying Budanov’s early release from prison last week.

With the collapse of the Soviet system at the end of 1991, journalists felt freer to speak and act according to their conscience. That is a long time ago now. According to the findings of the Press Emblem Campaign, the Russian Federation is now a dangerous country to report from. The 2008 statistics illustrate the fact: four media workers were killed, and many more suffered attacks, including beatings, threats and other kinds of harassment.