The woman who shamed Moscow

Death of the woman who shamed Moscow

Mark Franchetti, Sunday Times:

RUSSIA’S most famous investigative reporter, Anna Politkovskaya, was gunned down in the lift of her Moscow apartment block yesterday in an apparent contract killing.

A fearless opponent of Russia’s wars in Chechnya who once described President Vladimir Putin as a “KGB snoop” and compared him to Stalin, she was shot as she returned home from a shopping trip at 4.30pm. A pistol and four bullets were found near her body.

She was the most prominent of dozens of Russian journalists murdered in the past 10 years and her death has dealt a serious blow to the country’s reputation.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the former president, said: “It’s a strike against all the democratic independent press, a terrible crime against the entire country, against all of us.”