Editorial: 7 October, Putin’s birthday. Too many coincidences?
The Sardaana editorial board finds it hard to see the date of Anna Politkovskaya’s murder as a coincidence, and asks similar questions about Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel. This is the editors’ opinion; no official evidence of security-service involvement has been presented.
Twenty years ago, on 7 October 2006, Anna Politkovskaya was killed in Moscow (our news report). That day was Vladimir Putin’s birthday. That is a fact of the calendar. Everything that follows is the opinion of the Sardaana editorial board.
Why we struggle to believe in coincidence
In the editors’ view, it is hard to see the choice of that date as mere chance. Politkovskaya spent years reporting on abuses by Russian forces in Chechnya, and we believe her killing on the president’s birthday may have been a “gift” to Putin from the security services, above all the FSB. RFE/RL notes that the coincidence of dates prompted exactly such speculation from the start. We stress that no official evidence for this has been presented, and no court has ever identified who ordered the murder.
7 October 2023
Hamas’s attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, which killed hundreds of civilians, also fell on Putin’s birthday. In our opinion, this raises similar suspicions. We cannot rule out that Russian security services, including the FSB, were involved in preparing or financing that attack. Again: this is our suspicion, not an established fact; no public evidence of FSB involvement in the attack has been presented.
What is documented
Russia is one of very few states that openly cooperate with the Taliban: in April 2025 Moscow removed the movement from its list of terrorist organisations, and in July 2025 it became the first country to formally recognise the Taliban government, BBC News reported. Moscow also maintains contacts with Hamas: on 26 October 2023, less than three weeks after the attack on Israel, a Hamas delegation led by Abu Marzouk held talks at Russia’s Foreign Ministry in Moscow, RFE/RL reported. Israel called the invitation “deplorable.”
Our position
We believe these coincidences of dates, together with these ties, deserve an independent investigation. Until there is one, we will keep calling our suspicions suspicions. And we will keep remembering Anna Politkovskaya.
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