A look at official Russian reaction to the murder of investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

An excerpt from the NYT story:

(Russia's President Vladimir) Putin first treated the event, which was given significant air time on even his state-controlled news, with a three-day silence, as other world leaders expressed condolences.

The Kremlin’s silence seemed to scream. When at last he spoke, having been prodded at a news conference in Germany, Russia’s president used the occasion to insult her. “The level of her influence on political life in Russia was utterly insignificant,” he said.

Meanwhile, Mr. Putin’s main proxy in Chechnya and a frequent subject of Ms. Politkovskaya’s writing, the Chechen prime minister, Ramzan A. Kadyrov, proclaimed his innocence in a manner perhaps never before heard from a premier’s lips. He could not have killed her, he effectively said, because the record would show that he had never killed a woman before.

“I did not kill women and I never kill them,” he said on national television.

Normally, little is less difficult in statecraft than the protocol of condolence. Officials the world over routinely pause to reflect upon the deaths of figures with whom they share the public stage. Often the displays seem scripted. Sometimes they feel sincere. Rarely are they outright bungled.

For official Russia, Ms. Politkovskaya’s killing posed problems. The Kremlin faced the memory of a journalist who was celebrated abroad, but whom it had tried to make a nonperson at home.

Her commentary on Russian television had long ago ceased, as dissenters were forced from the air by Mr. Putin’s brand of message management. And her books, translated into several languages, are almost impossible to find here, echoing the days of samizdat.

The Kremlin was stuck. They had done what they could to push Ms. Politkovskaya and her lot to the margins. And her message stalked them past her end. Then came Mr. Putin’s biting remark.

Masha Gessen, another Moscow writer who has maintained her criticism of the Kremlin, reacted with anger. “The murder has exposed him, with unprecedented clarity, as a callous, cruel and cynical man,” she wrote in The Moscow Times.