Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya (née Mazepa;[a] 30 August 1958 – 7 October 2006) was a Russian investigative journalist who reported on political and social events in Russia, in particular, the Second Chechen War (1999–2005).

[4] On 7 October 2006 (notably, on the 54th birthday of Russian president Vladimir Putin),[5] she was murdered in the elevator of her block of apartments, an assassination that attracted international attention.

[25] However, after the spell at Izvestia she soon held another internship at the Vozdushnyi transport (Воздушный транспорт, the in-house magazine of the Ministry of Civil Aviation[26][27]),[21][28][22][23] as a reporter and editor of the Aeroflot emergencies and accidents section.

[36] From 1994 to 1999, she worked as the assistant chief editor of Obshchaya Gazeta [ru], headed by Yegor Yakovlev, where she wrote frequently about social problems, particularly the plight of refugees.

From June 1999 to 2006, she wrote columns for the biweekly Novaya Gazeta, a newspaper with strong investigative reporting that was critical of the new post-Soviet regime from the outset.

[38][39] She used each of these occasions to urge greater concern and responsibility by Western governments that, after the September 11 attacks on the United States, welcomed Putin's contribution to their "War on Terror".

She talked to officials, the military and the police and also frequently visited hospitals and refugee camps in Chechnya and in neighboring Ingushetia to interview those injured and uprooted by the renewed fighting.

In one characteristic instance in 1999, she not only wrote about the plight of an ethnically-mixed old peoples' home under bombardment in Grozny, but helped to secure the safe evacuation of its elderly inhabitants with the aid of her newspaper and public support.

As Politkovskaya reported, the order supposedly restored under the Kadyrovs became a regime of endemic torture, abduction, and murder, by either the new Chechen authorities or the various federal forces based in Chechnya.

In the book, she accused the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) of stifling all civil liberties to establish a Soviet-style dictatorship, but admitted: [It] is we who are responsible for Putin's policies ... [s]ociety has shown limitless apathy ... [a]s the Chekists have become entrenched in power, we have let them see our fear, and thereby have only intensified their urge to treat us like cattle.

[50] "Who killed Anna and who lay beyond her killer remains unknown", wrote Jon Snow, the main news anchor for the United Kingdom's Channel 4 in his foreword to the book's UK edition.

"Her murder robbed too many of us of absolutely vital sources of information and contact", he concluded, "Yet it may, ultimately, be seen to have at least helped prepare the way for the unmasking of the dark forces at the heart of Russia's current being.

While attending a December 2005 conference on the freedom of the press in Vienna organized by Reporters Without Borders, she said "People sometimes pay with their lives for saying aloud what they think.

"[55] She often received death threats as a result of her work, including being threatened with rape and experiencing a mock execution after being arrested by the military in Chechnya.

"[62] In 2006, the European Court of Human Rights found the Russian Federation responsible for the forced disappearance of a suspected Ingush militant, Khadzhi-Murat Yandiyev.

[63] While flying south in September 2004 to help negotiate with those who had taken over a thousand hostages in a school in Beslan (North Ossetia), Politkovskaya fell violently ill and lost consciousness after drinking tea given to her by an Aeroflot flight attendant.

To be shot...."[68] On the day of her murder, said Novaya Gazeta's chief editor Dmitry Muratov, Politkovskaya had planned to file a lengthy story on the torture practices believed to be used by the Chechen security detachments known as Kadyrovites.

In May 2007, a large posthumous collection of Anna's articles, entitled With Good Reason, was published by Novaya Gazeta and launched at the Gorbachev Foundation in Moscow.

There was insufficient evidence to charge the fourth man—an FSB colonel—with the murder, though he was suspected of a leading role in its organization; he stood trial at the same time for another offence.

Murad Musayev, a lawyer for the men on trial, told journalists that the case notes—as one of the interpretations of the crime—mentioned that a politician, based in Russia (but not named in those notes), was behind her death.

[83][84] On 5 December 2008, Sergei Sokolov, a senior editor of Novaya Gazeta, testified in court that he had received information (from sources he would not name) that defendant Dzhabrail Makhmudov was an agent of the FSB.

[85] He said Makhmudov's uncle Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, who was serving a 12-year jail sentence for the attempted murder of a Ukrainian businessman, also worked for the FSB.

[86] After all three men were acquitted of Politkovskaya's murder in February 2009, her children Vera and Ilya, their lawyers Karinna Moskalenko and Anna Stavitskaya, and senior Novaya Gazeta editor Sergei Sokolov gave their reaction to the trial at a press conference in Moscow.

I call on the Russian authorities and Parliament to relaunch a proper investigation and shed light on this murder, which undermines not only freedom of expression in Russia, but also its democratic foundation based on the rule of law.

A board member of the Memorial human rights society and one of Politkovskaya's key informants, guides, and colleagues in Chechnya, Estemirova was abducted in Grozny and found dead, several hours later, in the neighboring Republic of Ingushetia.

[91] In August 2011, Russian prosecutors claimed they were close to solving the murder after detaining Dmitry Pavliuchenkov, a former policeman, who they alleged was the principal organizer.

[9] In September 2016, Vladimir Markin, official spokesman for the Investigative Committee, included the killing of Anna Politkovskaya among the Most Dramatic Crimes in 21st century Russia[94] and claimed that it had been solved.

On 7 October 2016, Novaya gazeta released a video clip of its editors, correspondents, photographers and technical and administrative staff holding text-boards giving details of the case and stating, repeatedly, "The sponsor of Anna's murder has not been found".

[95] On the same day deputy chief editor Sergei Sokolov published a damning summary of the official investigation, describing its false turns and shortcomings, and emphasized that it had now effectively been wound up.

As the director says, it "is especially important now, when the world is so full of cynicism and corruption, when we so desperately need more people with Anna's level of courage and integrity and commitment".The 2007–2008 academic year at the College of Europe was named in her honour.