20 years since Anna Politkovskaya’s murder: those who ordered it have never been named

Twenty years ago, on 7 October 2006, Novaya Gazeta special correspondent Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead in the lift of her apartment block in central Moscow. She was 48. According to the International Press Institute (IPI), she was shot four times, including once in the head. The date was also Vladimir Putin’s 54th birthday, France 24 and AFP noted. RFE/RL wrote that the coincidence prompted speculation that the killing was meant as a “gift” to the president; no evidence for that has been established.

Reporting from Chechnya

Politkovskaya built her reputation on seven years of reporting from the Second Chechen War, where, IPI says, she documented torture, disappearances and abuses by Russian forces. RFE/RL describes her as a reporter who “exposed the brutality of Russia’s war in Chechnya.”

Her work drew retaliation. According to IPI, Russian security agents detained her in Chechnya in February 2001 and held her in a pit for three days without food or water while an officer threatened to shoot her. In her own published account, she described being beaten and humiliated by officers and subjected to a mock execution. In 2004 she was poisoned on a flight while travelling to cover the Beslan school siege, IPI reports.

Convictions, but no mastermind

In 2014 a Moscow court sentenced the gunman, Rustam Makhmudov, and Lom-Ali Gaitukayev, convicted of organizing the killing, to life in prison; former police officer Sergei Khadzhikurbanov received 20 years, RFE/RL reports. Two more Makhmudov brothers were also convicted, and in 2012 former police officer Dmitry Pavlyuchenkov was jailed for 11 years after confessing to organizing her surveillance. In total, six men were convicted.

No one has ever been tried as the person who ordered the murder. The statute of limitations expired in 2021, IPI says, and in 2018 the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia had failed to investigate effectively who commissioned the killing. In 2023 Putin pardoned Khadzhikurbanov after he fought in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Asked about the case in 2021, Putin said the authorities had “done everything to uncover these crimes,” France 24 reported.

On the anniversary, the European Union called for “an effective, independent and transparent investigation that brings all those responsible to justice.”