Russia is just taking care of some loose ends?

What on earth is going on?

A journalist who fell to his death from a fifth-storey window had received threats while preparing a report claiming Russia planned to provide sophisticated weapons to Syria and Iran, his newspaper said Tuesday.

Prosecutors have opened an inquest into the death of Ivan Safronov, a military affairs writer for the daily Kommersant. He died Friday in what some media said could have been murder.

The paper reported that Safronov had told his editors he would write a story about Russian plans to sell weapons to Iran and Syria via Belarus, but said he had not submitted the article.

Kommersant said Safronov recently told colleagues he had been warned he would face a criminal investigation on charges of revealing state secrets if he reported allegations that Russia had struck a deal to supply advanced Iskander missiles to Syria. Such a contract would upset the balance of forces in the Mideast and likely anger Israel and the United States.

and:

Federal and local law enforcement authorities are investigating a shooting in Prince George's County that critically injured a prominent intelligence expert who specializes in the former Soviet Union.

Paul Joyal, 53, was shot Thursday, four days after he alleged in a television broadcast that the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin was involved in the fatal poisoning of a former KGB agent in London.

Law enforcement sources and sources close to Joyal, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said the motive for the shooting was unclear. But several sources confirmed that FBI investigators are looking into the incident because of Joyal's background as an intelligence expert and his comments about the Alexander Litvinenko case.

Remember the polonium case? Another round of Don't-Mess-With-Putin?

Update 3/7: Bryan of Why Now? has some excellent points about the Russian journalist Ivan Safronov and what he was working on:

In the old days the transaction would have gone through Bulgaria, but now they use Belarus because Aleksandr Lukashenko needs to pay his bill for Russian natural gas.

It’s a pretty interesting shopping list: MiG-29 and Su-30 fighters, Iskander [SS-26 Stone] surface-to-surface missiles, S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems, and the Pantsyr-S1 missile/cannon close support anti-aircraft defense systems. The anti-aircraft systems are top shelf and pose a real problem for an attacking air force. The aircraft and Iskander systems are targets and a waste of money against either the US or Israel, unless the intention is to divert resources.

Putin has transferred his belief system from Karl Marx to Gordon Gekko, so he will sell weapons to anyone with cash.

Like Henry II of England, he doesn’t have to order people to be eliminated, it just happens. Of course, this might be the result of the people who talked to Safronov in the UAE realizing they should have kept their mouths shut, and removed a potential obstacle to their career advancement.