Activists have restored the memorial sign on Politkovskaya's house for the ninth time.
This time, a memorial plaque to mark the site of the torn-down memorial plaques on journalist Anna Politkovskaya's home was painted onto the wall. Activists also installed a plaque on the house stating that a memorial plaque had been destroyed.
As reported by the "Caucasian Knot," on February 6, a wooden memorial plaque, which had hung for over a week on the railing of the house where Novaya Gazeta columnist Anna Politkovskaya lived and was murdered, was destroyed again.
On January 27, representatives of the Yabloko party restored the memorial plaque for the eighth time. All previous plaques installed in January were torn down within a day of installation, on average, and one resident of the building reported the intentional destruction of the temporary plaques.
The plaque in memory of Anna Politkovskaya has been restored for the ninth time, RusNews reported last night.
However, activists who came to install the new temporary plaque discovered that "someone had already stenciled the text of the original plaque ("Anna Politkovskaya lived in this house and was vilely murdered on October 7, 2006." - Caucasian Knot note) directly onto the wall of the building," the publication stated.
"They secured it with plastic zip ties. As a result, the building on Lesnaya Street now has two makeshift plaques—one in memory of Anna Politkovskaya and the other in memory of the plaque dedicated to Anna Politkovskaya," the publication states.
The publication is illustrated with photographs of the new plaque and the stenciled inscription, taken from different angles, and a video filmed at night. The footage shows two young women attaching the plaque to a railing.
As a reminder, on January 18, a memorial plaque bearing the name of Anna Politkovskaya was smashed in a building on Lesnaya Street in Moscow. Civil Initiative activists installed a temporary plaque to replace the one destroyed, but it, too, was destroyed on January 19. Representatives of a far-right organization designated as terrorist claimed responsibility for the destruction of the first plaque. The man who smashed the plaque was fined 1,000 rubles, although he denied any wrongdoing, claiming that the plaque "fell and broke on its own." Anna Politkovskaya, known for her articles on the war and human rights violations in Chechnya, was murdered in Moscow on October 7, 2006. The court found that Lom-Ali Gaitukayev had orchestrated the murder, and he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Rustam Makhmudov has been identified as the perpetrator, according to the "Caucasian Knot" report "The Murder of Anna Politkovskaya".
Last Interview Anna Politkovskaya gave to a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent an hour and a half before her death. In this interview, the journalist commented on Ramzan Kadyrov's career prospects.
In 2025, on the 19th anniversary of Anna Politkovskaya's murder, residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg brought flowers to her grave, the Novaya Gazeta office, and the memorial to the victims of repression. Some of those convicted in the case of her murder have already been released, but the person who ordered it has not yet been convicted, Politkovskaya's colleagues recalled.
On the fifth anniversary of Politkovskaya's murder, journalists and human rights activists at a rally in Tbilisi highlighted her contribution to the fight for freedom of speech, demanding that those who ordered her murder be identified.
"Caucasian Knot" is publishing materials dedicated to Politkovskaya on the thematic page "Politkovskaya and Estemirova," which also contains materials about Anna's friend, journalist and human rights activist. href="https://www.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/125059/">Natalia Estemirova, who was killed in 2009 and also worked on the problems of residents of Chechnya.