Dead Russian Newsman Was Probing Arms Sales to Syria and Iran

Another Russian journalist has died under suspicious circumstances while investigating a story damaging to Russia’s ruling elites. Ivan Safronov, a former defense official working for the newspaper Kommersant, died in a fall before he could report on possible Russian arms deals with Syria and Iran. Such deals would be a significant boost to those two nations’ air-defense and precision-strike capabilities at a time of growing confrontation between the US and Iranian camps in the Middle East. They would also enrich Russia’s military-industrial complex, which has come to dominate much of the Russian state under Vladimir Putin. Safronov may be just the latest in a growing line of reporters to learn the power of that military-industrial complex the hard way. – YaleGlobal