Anna Politkovskaya

for Russians, there are two distinct wars. The first was declared by Boris Yeltsin

But for Russians, there are two distinct wars. The first was declared by Boris Yeltsin, after local leaders split the Chechen-Ingush republic in two as the Soviet Union spun apart in 1991.

Ingushetia joined the Russian Federation. Chechnya refused. Russian forces rolled in to Chechnya in 1994

by 1996, the ill-equipped Russian Army, which rained down expensive explosives on Chechens, but could not feed or shoe its soldiers, had to withdraw

Anna Politkovskaya strongly believed that Vladimir Putin and Russian security services had allowed the self-proclaimed Chechen terrorist Shamil Basaev to stage raids in Dagestan in 1999

October 2002, heavily armed terrorists professing allegiance to Chechen separatists (Shamil Basaev claimed credit for the plan) seized the Dubrovka theater in Moscow during a performance of Nord-Ost, a Russian musical. They took 912 people hostage.

Putin government used the siege to persuade the lower house of the Duma to pass broad, blunt new restric‍

restrictions on what the press can report and how.

a 2005 poll conducted by the All-Russian Public Opinion Research Center showed that 82 percent of the public wanted censorship. T

ON THE DAY THAT ANNA POLITKOVSKAYA was shot to death, October 7, 2006, in the elevator of her apartment block on Lesnaya Street, the editor of Novaya Gazeta says that she was about to file a long story on torture as it is routinely conducted by Chechen security forces supported by Russia.