Editor says Politkovskaya predicted Russia's path under Putin, 20 years after her death

Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead in the lift of her central Moscow apartment block on 7 October 2006, according to France 24. The date was President Vladimir Putin's 54th birthday, France 24 reported. Before her death she had reported on the war in Chechnya and on Putin's rise.

Sergei Sokolov, her editor at the Novaya Gazeta newspaper where she worked, said Politkovskaya predicted Russia's course. "Everything that is happening with Russia was predicted by Anna Politkovskaya in the books she published before her death," Sokolov said, according to France 24. He said that at the time nobody believed her and people said she was exaggerating the dangers and fears.

France 24 reported that Politkovskaya warned Russian journalists would have to show "total servility to Putin" or face death or prison. The report said she warned of Putin's authoritarian tendencies at a time when he was being welcomed in the West. It said she covered war crimes committed by both the Russian army and Chechen rebels, and pushed both sides to evacuate civilians.

In 2002, she walked into a Moscow theatre seized by Chechen rebels to try to secure the release of hostages, France 24 reported. "The terrorists had chosen me as a person they wanted to talk to. I couldn't refuse," she later said, according to the report. More than 130 hostages were killed when special forces gassed the theatre and stormed the building, France 24 reported.

The gunmen behind her murder are in prison, but the person or people who ordered the killing have never been named, according to France 24. Asked about that in 2021, Putin said his agencies "did everything to uncover these crimes", France 24 reported. Moscow has labelled Novaya Gazeta a "foreign agent", France 24 reported.

France 24 reported that Putin remains in power, that Moscow's war against Ukraine is in its fifth year, and that the war has killed hundreds of thousands. The report said domestic repression and censorship have reached levels not seen since the Soviet era. Sokolov said that if Politkovskaya were alive, "she would definitely not be able to stay silent".