Anna Politkovskaya was a polemic reporter who published stories about Putin's rising government control, Russia's war in Chechnya, the corrupt rubber stamp Duma (Parliament) and human rights abuses.

She was shot dead on October 7th of 2006 with 3 shots in the chest and one control head shot, a soviet standard issue sidearm Makarov pistol was left by her side, a usual calling card of contract killers within Russia.

She was returning to her apartment, about to publish accounts of torture that was occuring in Chechnya in the small paper Novoya Gazeta for which she worked for, this war was a conflict many Russian reporters wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole since it was not a topic the government wanted brought up since much of it was basically carried out to secure oil supplies in that area and thus was in many ways inhumane, so much so that the Chechens started to utilized terrorist attacks to shock the rest of Russia into action.