A Russian editor says he won the Nobel because his slain colleagues could not

THE DAY before Dmitry Muratov won the Nobel peace prize, the editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta stood in remembrance outside the Moscow apartment block where his newspaper’s most famous journalist was murdered exactly 15 years before. Anna Politkovskaya was shot on October 7th 2006—Vladimir Putin’s birthday. Her death, Mr Putin said at the time, caused more damage to Russia’s authorities than her work. This callousness offended Mr Muratov. It hurts that the statute of limitations has passed and those who ordered the killing have still not been named.