PUTIN STRIKES AGAIN: ANOTHER FOE BRUTALLY BEATEN AND NEAR DEATH

JAVNO:

A Russian reporter who challenged alleged corruption in local government was close to death on Monday after a savage beating, a close friend said.

Mikhail Beketov, the editor of a newspaper in the Moscow suburb of Khimki, was found unconscious and covered in blood near his home on Nov. 13. He had multiple fractures.

Doctors have amputated one of his legs and have had to delay another operation at Moscow's main emergency hospital, the Sklifosovsky Institute, because his condition is so serious.

"Mikhail is floating between life and death," Lyudmila Fedotova, a friend of Beketov's, told Reuters by telephone.

"He remains in a coma. The doctors say he is the most seriously ill patient in the intensive care unit of the Sklifosovsky Institute."

"This is what happens when you oppose certain people," Fedotova said. "If they finish me off then you can write a story about that too. I am no longer scared."

Putin is an evil man. He's run circles around Bush - and Obama's Clinton people are probably not going to d any better...