Luke Harding’s piece on the front page of today’s Guardian is public service journalism at its best. It does not attempt to justify the suicide bombings in Moscow last week that killed 40 people and injured 70. That would be monstrous.  Rather, by diligently explaining the murder by Russian security forces of four garlic pickers on the border between Chechnya and Ingushetia (including 17 year old Movsar Dakaev, pictured), it begins to reveal a small part of the cycle of savagery, repression and revenge by which the seeds of violent separatism are so often nurtured.

On an entirely separate note I wonder if the prominence of this excellent piece is not also intended to set a challenge to the Guardian’s main centre-left rival, the  Independent. Will the Independent under Alexander Lebedev cover Chechnya as courageously as his Russian newspaper, Novaya Gazeta has in the past?