By Todd Prince
Bloomberg
October 7, 2006
SourceOct. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, one of the most vocal critics of Russian President Vladimir Putin's war in Chechnya, was gunned down in Moscow today, the third execution-style killing in the past three weeks.
Politkovskaya, whose books include ``Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy'' and ``A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya,'' was found shot to death in the entrance of her building on Lesnaya Ulitsa, a couple of miles from the Kremlin.
The murder was likely connected with her work, Moscow First Deputy Prosecutor Vyacheslav Rosinsky said, according to state television. The killer finished the murder with a controlled shot to the head, state TV cited investigators as saying.
A career journalist, Politkovskaya rose to fame with her critical reports of human rights abuses in Chechnya, a Muslim republic in Russia's south. Russia send troops into Chechnya for a second time in 1999 as local rebels sought to set up a separate Islamic republic.
``She attacked Russian officials for being brutal and unfair to Chechens, especially women and children,'' said Nikolai Zlobin, director of the World Security Institute and a friend of Politkovskaya. ``She never cared about financial satisfaction, but about justice.''
Politkovskaya most recently worked at Novaya Gazeta, a pro- democracy paper that is partly owned by Mikhail Gorbachev, the last president of the Soviet Union, and billionaire deputy Alexander Lebedev.
Other Killings
In ``Putin's Russia,'' Politkovskaya criticized the Russian president for stifling dissent and other civil liberties. Putin turned 54 today.
The murder is the third killing in the past three weeks. Enver Ziganshin, the chief engineer of BP Plc's Russian gas unit, OAO Rusia Petroleum, was shot and killed in Irkutsk on Sept. 30. Russian central banker Andrei Kozlov, who led a fight against corruption in the nation's banking industry, was assassinated on Sept. 14.
Violence against journalists in Russia is ``frequent and impunity prevails,'' Paris-based Reporters Without Borders concluded in its annual survey this year.
Paul Klebnikov, the U.S.-born editor of Forbes Magazine in Russia, was shot dead in Moscow in July 2004. Klebnikov was at the time the 11th journalist to be murdered in a contract-style killing since Putin took office in 2000. No one has been brought to justice in any of the killings, according to the New York- based Committee to Protect Journalists.
To contact the reporter on this story: Todd Prince in New York at
Tprince2@bloomberg.netLast Updated: October 7, 2006 14:45 EDT