When I started this blog back in September of 2006, things were pretty different then in Russia.  It was about a year after I had been expelled from Russia under vague threat of arrest, back when most of us who were vocally opposed to the policies of the Kremlin leadership believed that there were certain limits to what the government would do, and still some semblance of basic rights.  Various NGOs and civil society groups were still running, journalism was dying but was still much stronger, and there was a highly caffeinated intellectual energy among the new generation. During my time living in Moscow during the trial I knew Anna Politkovskaya, and I regret to say that one of my last memories of meeting her in person, along with Stanislav Markelov, occurred at the T.G.I. Friday’s on Tverskaya Street – I just wished I had picked a better restaurant for that final dinner, had I known the terrible future awaiting my friends.

Today of course is the fourth anniversary of the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, and, coincidentally or not, the 58th birthday of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.  After four anniversaries of this terrible death, hashing through the details, the memories, her work, and the political afterlife of the event, most readers are already familiar with the details of the story.  Anna was returning home to her apartment on Lesnaya Street on Saturday around 4:00PM from the supermarket.  Closed circuit cameras have her walking from her Lada to take several bags of groceries up to the apartment, before returning back down for the rest.  When the elevator came to the ground floor, Anna was greeted by a single individual in a baseball cap, who fired three shots from a Makarov pistol into her body, followed by a final confirm shot to the head.  Later, during one of the extremely flawed court proceedings, it would be revealed that Lt. Col. Pavel Ryaguzov of the FSB had passed intelligence on Politkovskaya’s whereabouts to the killers.