Anna Politkovskaya

Shot on 7 October 2006 in the elevator of her Moscow apartment block by a contract killer; the Novaya Gazeta journalist who documented the Chechen wars was murdered on Putin birthday.

Overview

Politkovskaya had reported the second Chechen war from inside the wreckage of Grozny, exposed torture in the filtration camps, catalogued the seizure of hostages at Beslan that she tried to reach, and written books indicting the Russian security state. A gunman waited in her elevator; her notebook and research were the unseen target. Five Chechen men who surveilled her were convicted in 2014; the gunman Rustam Makhmudov, the organizer Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, and the former policeman brothers of the Khusnutdinov chain were sentenced. Who ordered the killing has never been named in court. The murder became the emblem of the killing of journalists in Putin Russia, following the murder of Paul Klebnikov and preceding that of Natalia Estemirova, and her paper continues publishing with its windows marked by the portraits of its murdered reporters.