Propaganda or not, anti-Putin Russians have a bit of a track record of untimely death.
Was the US bombing of Al Jazeera's office better because the journalists killed didn't have American passports?
Uh, what are terrorists if not political opponents?
Killing people who are deemed to hold certain beliefs without any judicial process linking them to specific criminal activity is simply killing political opponents.
This follows from the adage that war is politics with guns.
I also do not draw a major distinction between attempting to prosecute American journalists under the espionage act and simply having them killed. Arguably prosecuting them creates at least the same kind of chilling effect on journalism as a whole as murdering them does, and both leaders have the same goal of quelling dissent and intimidating reporters.
I'm no expert, but _attempting_ to prosecute and actually killing is probably a worthwhile distinction.
You're being too charitable. Both have the same intent. The more asymmetrically powerful the ruler is, the less lethal the threat needs to be to create a chilling effect.
For example, rival gang members (with power parity) must kill each-other because they lack other mechanisms of coercion and must play their only card in the moment.
Creating martyrs is always sub-optimal compared to catching and incarcerating "criminals" or forcing compliance by the threat of capture or alienation/ostracism.
As a thought experiment, which state has stronger control over its citizens, Russia or Singapore?
Keep in mind that there is a massive propaganda campaign being done by the US to make Americans think Putin is evil.
Chances are, Putin is no more evil than any US president. Keep in mind that even the most ostensibly intelligent, reasonable, and articulate president in memory, Barack Obama, happily accelerated the campaign to convict journalists under the espionage act and ramped up drone executions abroad.
My point is that the US may legitimately consider Russia an adversary based on geopolitical realities (scarce resources, etc.) but none of this means Putin is more evil than a US president.
In the US there is some degree of public consent required for military action and foreign policy, and the best way to make this happen is to create a moral argument. So of course the leaders of all nations the US considers adversaries are framed as evil. But this is just meant to help achieve democratic consent, no serious policy thinkers actually believe it.