Press Release, 7.10.2026

Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

Twenty years ago, journalist Anna Politkovskaya was murdered. To mark the anniversary, Novaya Gazeta has issued a stamp bearing her portrait in the style of its portraits of Nobel laureates. The editorial team is convinced that, had Politkovskaya lived, it is she who would have received the Nobel Peace Prize. Speaking about the essence of her work, Dmitry Muratov, Nobel Prize laureate, founder of Novaya Gazeta and a member of Yabloko, compared it with the work of Yabloko.

On the eve of the sad anniversary, Dmitry Muratov, and the newspaper’s Editor-in-Chief Sergei Sokolov held a stamp cancellation ceremony.

Muratov noted that the stamp was not legal tender, since it was priceless, and that its resemblance to the portraits of Nobel laureates was intentional: “This is exactly how we picture Anna.”

Muratov read out an excerpt from journalist Masha Slonim’s book Returns: A Frivolous Memoir, in which she recalls Anna Politkovskaya and their trip to Chechnya, during which Politkovskaya acted not as a journalist but as a rescuer.

According to Muratov, that is exactly who Politkovskaya was: someone who intervened in life.

“That was her purpose, and that is our purpose: intervening in life so that it can be lived without fear, with dignity and without nuclear threats. All of these 43 words match what Politkovskaya did and what Yabloko is doing now,” said Dmitry Muratov, referring to the Yabloko party’s election programme.

Sergei Sokolov said that Novaya Gazeta had restored the memorial plaque on the apartments block where Anna Politkovskaya lived, which had been smashed by Nazis, and that for the time being it would be kept in the museum room at the newspaper’s offices.

“We fully understand that the time will come when we will be able to keep it not in a museum but where it belongs: on Anna Politkovskaya’s house. How long this will take, we cannot say, but that it will happen is a fact.”

On 7 October, the 20th anniversary of Anna Politkovskaya’s murder, Yabloko Chairman Nikolai Rybakov once again put up a temporary memorial plaque outside her house on Lesnaya Street in Moscow.

Photo: The plaque put up by Nikolai Rybakov at the entrance to the building on Lesnaya Street where Anna Politkovskaya was murdered / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

Representatives of Moscow Yabloko laid flowers at the site of the tragedy and paid tribute to the journalist’s memory. In St. Petersburg, party activists brought flowers in memory of Anna Politkovskaya to the Solovetsky Stone, a memorial to the victims of political repression on Troitskaya Square.

Photo: Kirill Goncharov, Chairman of Moscow Yabloko, and representatives of the Moscow branch of Yabloko at the Anna’s house / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

“Anna Politkovskaya is more than a journalist. She is a Citizen with a capital C: someone who did not keep silent when silence was safer, and who wrote about what others were afraid to write about. Her memory is our shared responsibility,” said Kirill Goncharov, Chairman of Moscow Yabloko.

Photo: David Zudin, Olga Shtannikova and Dmitry Anisimov, representatives of St. Petersburg Yabloko, at the Solovetsky Stone / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

It should be noted that on 27 January, Nikolai Rybakov and Moscow Yabloko member Ivan Dorofeev put up a handmade memorial plaque outside Politkovskaya’s house. The marble plaque that had been on the building since 2013 was destroyed by neo-Nazis, and the new plaques that appeared in its place were repeatedly removed. At the time, Rybakov appealed to the head of the Moscow police, demanding that those responsible for the vandalism be found and held to account.