RUSSIA: To many Russians Anna Politkovskaya was a fearless crusader for the truth even as the media came ever more firmly under Kremlin control.
In the pages of her newspaper Novaya Gazeta (New Journal) she exposed scandal after scandal, detailing, often through harrowing interviews, torture, murder and subversion carried out by security forces in Chechnya. She could also wax polemical, and was not slow to point out how few of her exposes resulted in prosecutions against the security forces.
Politkovskaya was raised amid the Soviet elite, born in 1958 in New York to parents working there as diplomats. She could have used powerful connections to secure a good life in the new Russia, but chose instead the badly paid path of journalism.
Politkovskaya graduated as a journalist from Moscow State University in 1980 and worked for the Soviet newspaper Izvestia for more than 10 years.
In 1999 she joined Novaya Gazeta, which is now one of only a handful of newspapers which remain critical of the Kremlin.
In 2002, when Chechen fighters captured a Moscow theatre, her contacts with the Chechens allowed her to be a go-between between rebels and security forces.
She gained international plaudits for her books. One, Putin's Russia, Life in a Failing Democracy, chronicled what she saw as a return to Soviet-style authoritarianism.
In 2004 she was joint winner, with two rights activists, of Sweden's Olof Palme prize, named in honour of the slain prime minister. But her polemical style drew criticism, even from her admirers. Dmitry Sabov, foreign editor for Ogoniok, one of the few remaining news magazines ready to criticise the Kremlin, told The Irish Times: "She really did believe in justice, and sometimes ignored lots of facts and details which didn't go with her conception."
Two years ago her job cost her her marriage when her husband said he could no longer stand the strain of her trips to Chechnya.
She once said that she knew the risks of her life. "Risk is a usual part of my job, the job of a Russian journalist, and I cannot stop because it is my duty."
She is survived by a son and daughter.