Anna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist who reported on the atrocities of war in Chechnya in the face of death threats, intimidation, and poisoning.

Critical of Vladimir Putin, Russian journalist Politkovskaya was murdered in an assault on a free press.

Politkovskaya was a special correspondent for the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and author of several books including Putin's Russia and The Dirty War. For more than six years, she reported on the plight of Chechen refugees and the atrocities committed by both rebels and Russian troops in the Second Chechnyan War.

She was instrumental in documenting the use of zachistka (a Russian word meaning "mop-up") in which young men — or any others considered suspicious — are rounded up, detained, sometimes tortured, and often executed.

In 2000, the FSB (former KGB) arrested Politkovskaya in Chechnya and imprisoned her in a pit without food or water for three days.

In 2002 she helped negotiate with Chechnya separatists for the release of hostages held in the Dubrovka Theater. She was on her way to serve as a mediator to the Beslan school hostage crisis but she was poisoned on the plane. She believed that the FSB was trying to prevent her from reporting on the events of the siege, which resulted in 344 casualties, half of them children.

Politkovskaya was shot and killed in Moscow in October 2006, a year after she was awarded the Civil Courage Prize. Her murder sparked worldwide outcries from advocates of press freedom.

Politkovskaya received the courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation in 2002, as well as awards from the Overseas Press Club and Amnesty International.