Alexei Venediktov, one of Russia's most prominent journalists, doesn't go out without a bodyguard and doesn't answer mobile phone calls for fear of being tracked.
He has worried about security since someone left a chopping block with an ax in it outside his apartment in 2009 and he fled Russia for a week this year, fearing he was on a hit list.
Such precautions don't seem out of place in a country where at least 17 journalists have been killed this decade, or for an editor whose radio station has been accused by President Vladimir Putin of "pouring diarrhea over me day and night."
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