In her first months at the newspaper, Kostyuchenko was too scared to approach Politkovskaya, because she felt too young and inexperienced. In the decade since Politkovskaya’s death, the space for independent journalism in Russia has narrowed further. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Reporters without Borders activists demonstrate in Berlin in 2009 with images of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov, and Novaya Gazeta journalists Anastasia Baburova and Anna Politkovskaya. In 2015 she catalogued the involvement of Russian soldiers in the war in east Ukraine, an involvement furiously denied by the Kremlin and a taboo subject for Russian journalists. “I was offered $10,000 a month to work on television, and at Novaya Gazeta I earn the same as my sister earns selling jeans in Yaroslavl.

Source: The Guardian October 05, 2016 10:37 UTC