Twenty years after the murder of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, her reporting on the war in Chechnya and the rise of Vladimir Putin remains a symbol of resistance to authoritarian power. A tribute at Paris’s Théâtre de la Ville brought together her friends, colleagues and Nobel Peace Prize-winning editor Dmitry Muratov to remember a journalist who refused to remain silent.
The event featured Femme non rééducable (Woman Who Cannot Be Re-educated), a play written by Italian playwright Stefano Massini in 2006, shortly after Politkovskaya’s assassination. Actress Caroline Rochefort portrayed the journalist through her own writings, tracing a career defined by the belief that reporting was a moral commitment.
Muratov, former editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, joined the performance to recall his colleague and the dangers faced by those who continue to challenge the Kremlin.
A journalist who refused to look away
Politkovskaya was widely regarded with suspicion by people who could not understand her determination to expose abuses during the Chechen war. Friends recalled how her insistence on reporting the suffering of civilians was often dismissed as obsession.
Muratov illustrated that commitment with a symbolic gesture on stage, picking up a stone representing the bloodied Caucasus republic and imagining placing it on Politkovskaya’s desk — a reminder of the realities she believed could not be ignored.
The former editor has himself faced years of intimidation. Four years ago, he was attacked on a train in Siberia, where assailants threw red paint mixed with acetone into his face while shouting about Russian soldiers fighting in Ukraine. He underwent four operations to save his eyes.
Muratov, 65, now lives under the pressure of the Kremlin’s “foreign agent” designation. Novaya Gazeta, which he helped establish in 1993 after the collapse of the Soviet Union, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for its defence of freedom of expression.
The murder that remains unresolved
Politkovskaya was shot dead on October 7, 2006, as she returned to her Moscow apartment carrying shopping bags. She was 48 and left behind two children.
The date coincided with Putin’s 54th birthday. Her funeral was attended by around a thousand people, but no government representatives were present. Among the few foreign political figures there was Italian campaigner Marco Pannella.
Several people involved in the killing were convicted, including members of a criminal network linked to Chechnya and former Moscow police officials. But the person who ordered the murder has never been identified, leaving a central question unanswered: who wanted Politkovskaya silenced?
Her work had focused heavily on the war in Chechnya, where she documented abuses and the suffering of civilians. The conflict was also central to Putin’s consolidation of power after he became prime minister in 1999. A series of deadly apartment bombings that year helped fuel the renewed war, with the authorities blaming Chechen militants. Allegations and suspicions surrounding the bombings have persisted, but responsibility remains disputed.
The campaign devastated the Chechen capital, Grozny, and helped establish a model of rule built around military force and loyalty to Moscow. Ramzan Kadyrov, the republic’s leader and a close Kremlin ally, has since become a key figure in that system.
Politkovskaya travelled to the region not only to report on the conflict but also to bring money and medicine to people in need. Journalist and filmmaker Manon Loizeau, who knew her, recalled her determination to reach those suffering beyond the public view of the war.
Novaya Gazeta continues its work
Politkovskaya was not the only journalist associated with Novaya Gazeta to be killed. Around a dozen of the newspaper’s journalists and collaborators have died in attacks over the years, yet its European edition continues to publish online, maintaining its critical coverage of Russian power.
At the Paris event, Muratov also presented photographs documenting individual stories of repression. One concerned a young Russian woman sentenced to 15 years in prison after falling in love with a Ukrainian soldier. He described the punishment as a sentence against love, highlighting what he sees as the cruelty and absurdity of the system.
The case reflects a wider crackdown on dissent in Russia. The article cited at the event put the number of political prisoners at more than 7,000, compared with around 700 in 1986, when Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms brought the Soviet Gulag system to an end.
Many of those detained are ordinary people punished for opposing the war or expressing views unacceptable to the authorities.
A legacy of resistance
Politkovskaya’s reporting exposed the human cost of a political system increasingly reliant on war, from Chechnya to Georgia and Ukraine. Her murder did not end that tradition of investigative journalism, even as the risks for reporters and critics have grown.
The message Muratov left with the audience in Paris was simple: do not abandon those who are being persecuted.
Two decades after Politkovskaya’s death, her work remains a reminder of the role journalism can play in confronting power — and of the cost of refusing to look away.
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