The plaque on Politkovskaya's house in Moscow has been restored for the 27th time.
The twenty-seventh temporary plaque has been installed on the building in Moscow where Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya lived and was murdered.
As the Caucasian Knot reported, on January 18, the memorial plaque, which had hung for almost 20 years on the wall of the building on Lesnaya Street in Moscow where Novaya Gazeta columnist Anna Politkovskaya lived and was shot, was smashed for the first time. Most of the temporary plaques installed by activists after that lasted less than a day. By March 4, in addition to the memorial plaque, 26 temporary plaques had been destroyed.
Most of the plaques repeat the original text from the broken memorial plaque: "Anna Politkovskaya lived in this house and was vilely murdered on October 7, 2006." Some plaques implicated neo-Nazis in the destruction of memorial plaques. Representatives of a far-right organization, designated as terrorist, claimed involvement in the destruction of the first plaque. The man who smashed the plaque was fined 1,000 rubles, but he denied any wrongdoing, claiming that the plaque "fell and broke on its own."
Activists have restored the memorial plaque in honor of Anna Politkovskaya for the twenty-seventh time, Sotavision* reported today. Activists plan to continue restoring the memorial plaque until it permanently remains on the building where Anna Politkovskaya died, the publication states.
As seen in the video attached to the post, several people gathered at the entrance to the building, and one of the girls pasted a plaque that repeats the text from the broken memorial plaque: "Anna Politkovskaya lived in this building and was vilely murdered on October 7, 2006."
Any civic expression, whether a plaque in memory of Anna Politkovskaya or a "Last Address" sign for a victim of Stalin's repressions, provokes active aggression among supporters of the authorities in Russia. Impunity encourages spontaneous acts of vandalism, committed even without direct orders from above, human rights activists interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot" indicated.
In January, one of the building's residents admitted to destroying a temporary sign. "Yes, I'm breaking it! Who gave you permission to put it up? She didn't live here, she had a safe house! This is my house! I didn't give you permission!" she said. The woman noted that she hadn't broken the original memorial plaque, but that the plaque had "always been a nuisance." Temporary plaques and bouquets of flowers are regularly torn down and thrown into the nearest trash can by 69-year-old Kadyrov fan Galina Shustova, Victoria Artemyeva noted in a February 17 article for Novaya Gazeta.
Anna Politkovskaya, known for her articles on the war and human rights violations in Chechnya, was killed 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 direct perpetrator, according to the "Caucasian Knot" report "The Murder of Anna Politkovskaya".
Anna Politkovskaya's 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" publishes 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 the residents of Chechnya.
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