Anna Politkovskaya

Anna Stepanovna Mazepa was born in New York City to Soviet Ukrainian diplomats working at the United Nations. Graduating from the Faculty of Journalism at Moscow State University in 1980, she began her journalistic career during the Soviet era and rose to international prominence in 1999 as an investigative reporter and special correspondent for the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta.

Politkovskaya made over fifty hazardous trips to war-torn Chechnya, conducting firsthand investigations into civilian disappearances, extrajudicial killings, filtration camps, and systemic torture carried out by federal forces and pro-Moscow militias. Her books, notably A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya and Putin's Russia, provided devastating indictments of state brutality and the erosion of post-Soviet democracy. She also acted as a trusted negotiator during the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis, attempting to deliver water and medical aid to hostages.

Targeted continuously by authorities and paramilitary commanders, Politkovskaya survived a mock execution by Russian military forces in Chechnya in 2001 and suffered near-fatal poisoning while flying to mediate during the 2004 Beslan school siege. On 7 October 2006, she was shot to death in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building. Her assassination shocked the world and became an indelible international symbol of the deadly perils facing independent journalism in modern Russia.