The newspaper where slain Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya worked has offered a reward of almost US$1 million for information leading to her killers amid widespread international condemnation of the murder.
Politkovskaya's face stared out from the front page of every major Russian newspaper yesterday as her colleagues hailed her fearless reporting and vowed to search for her killer.
Politkovskaya's newspaper, the liberal daily Novaya Gazeta, published a front page bordered in black with a large picture of the murdered reporter. "She was beautiful," its story began.
PHOTO: AP
The paper vowed in a front-page editorial: "As long as there is a Novaya Gazeta, her killers will not sleep soundly."
A shareholder in the paper has announced a 25 million ruble (US$930,000) reward for information leading to the arrest of the journalist's killer.
The apparent assassination on Saturday of Politkovskaya, the country's top investigative journalist and a fierce critic of President Vladimir Putin, was also cast as further evidence of the grim state of media freedom in today's Russia.
Politkovskaya, 48, was shot in her apartment building in an execution-style killing as she stepped out of an elevator on Saturday.
The killer shot her three times in the chest, then once in the head, and left the murder weapon at the scene, daily Kommersant cited police sources as saying.
Kommersant focused on possible motives for the murder, citing the work that made Politkovskaya a hero in the international journalistic community and a scourge for the Kremlin: investigation into the human costs of the brutal war in Chechnya.
Noting that Politkovskaya had been finishing a report on allegations of torture by the Kremlin-backed Chechen leadership, Kommersant said the killing "could change the structure of political power in Chechnya."
It said the investigation would likely target the same figure much of Politkovskaya's recent work did: Chechen Prime Minister Ramzan Kadyrov, whose private security force is accused by human rights activists of engaging in torture and kidnapping.
The EU and the US joined Russian politicians, journalists and human rights activists in condemning her killing.
The Kremlin, however, had yet to give any public reaction to the murder by yesterday morning.
Business daily Vedomosti, one of Russia's last independent dailies, lauded Politkovskaya's fearless reports from Chechnya.
"She described in such a way that the reader's heart would ache with compassion for `us' -- the officers and soldiers thrown into the crucible of war -- and for `them' -- the Chechen and Ingush families forced to flee their homes, to search for relatives cut down by the war."
It also lamented that the murder of the country's most outspoken reporters had become a familiar ritual.
"In Russia a peculiar tradition has developed to recognize the services of uncompromising reporters: murderers put a full stop to their work."
Although Politkovskaya's aggressive reporting of atrocities by Russian forces in Chechnya brought her international fame, the Kremlin-controlled media rarely gave her airtime.
Novaya Gazeta has a circulation of 171,000 in a country of 140 million people and is not widely read outside the intellectual elite. Most Russians get their news from TV, where all the main channels toe a pro-Kremlin line.
Russian TV, however, has reported Politkovskaya's death prominently, noting that she had won international recognition for criticizing government policies in Chechnya. But it did not mention her withering and highly personal criticism of Putin.
"Putin has by chance got his hands on enormous power and has used it to catastrophic effect" she wrote in her book Putin's Russia which was not published in her homeland.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion