"It can only be Putin or Medvedev. Two years ago, I had the quintessential Moscow experience of getting stuck in the kind of power traffic jam these closures can cause, waiting for at least 30 minutes before that black ­G-class Mercedes whipped by. My cabbie suffered silently, muttering to himself every once in a while. So did everyone around us. Not tonight. As the presidential posse hangs a turn toward New Arbat, a vicious chorus of horns, pressed at once by seemingly everyone from here to the horizon, greets it head-on. A frozen symphony of hate and frustration hangs in the air. The traffic is not moving an inch, but at least there’s the noise."

"What takes more doing is getting to the grass roots of Russia's thoroughbred industry -- visiting the country's studs." (Whitney Tower, Sports Illustrated, 1972.)

Anne Applebaum on Politkovskaya's assasination