00:55, 18 February 2026

The memorial plaque on Anna Politkovskaya's house has been restored for the seventeenth time this month.

The seventeenth homemade plaque on Politkovskaya's house. Photo: SOTAvision* / Telegram

Moscow activists have installed a memorial plaque in honor of Anna Politkovskaya for the seventeenth time near the house where the journalist lived and was murdered.

As reported by the "Caucasian Knot", on January 18, the memorial plaque, which had hung for almost 20 years on the wall of the house on Lesnaya Street in Moscow where Novaya Gazeta columnist Anna Politkovskaya lived and was shot, was smashed for the first time. Civil Initiative activists installed a temporary plaque to replace the one destroyed, but it was also destroyed on January 19. On the afternoon of February 17, the 16th temporary plaque was destroyed; like most of the previous ones, it hung in place for less than a day.

One of the plaques, installed by Yabloko activists, hung for a week and a half, but was also destroyed on February 6. Activists then painted over the original text from the broken plaque ("Anna Politkovskaya lived in this house and was vilely murdered on October 7, 2006") onto the building's facade. 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 installed another homemade plaque on the facade of a building on Lesnaya Street in Moscow late in the evening of February 17. Activists continue to restore the plaque as it is destroyed; this is the seventeenth time the memorial has been restored, SOTAvision* reports.

A new plaque, which repeats the text of the plaque destroyed on January 18, is attached to the wall below a stenciled inscription with the same words. "The graffiti is getting duller every day," Victoria Artemyeva noted in a February 17 article for Novaya Gazeta.

For a month, temporary plaques and bouquets of flowers have been torn down and carried to the nearest trash can by 69-year-old Kadyrov fan Galina Shustova, a resident of a building on Lesnaya Street. She claims the plaque "has always been a nuisance, from the very day it appeared." Restoring the memorial sign for the ninth and eleventh times, activists installed a plaque near the building on Lesnaya Street with the text: "Here in 2026, neo-Nazis destroyed the memorial plaque to Anna Politkovskaya."

The return of Anna Politkovskaya's name to the daily agenda was inevitable, since "all the Politkovskaya themes have returned," Artemyeva believes. "From war crimes, terrorist attacks, and torture of prisoners to refugee issues, the complete lack of rights for political prisoners, and all manner of emergency situations. The difference, however, is that all of Russia has now become Chechnya," the article says.

Any civic expression, whether a plaque commemorating Anna Politkovskaya or a "Last Address" sign for a victim of Stalin's repressions, provokes active aggression among supporters of the government in Russia. Impunity encourages spontaneous acts of vandalism, committed even without direct orders from above, human rights activists and a journalist interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot" indicated.

Anna Politkovskaya, known for her articles on the war and human rights violations in Chechnya, was murdered 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 perpetrator, according to the "Caucasian Knot" report "The Murder of Anna Politkovskaya".

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 her friend To Anna, journalist and human rights activist Natalia Estemirova, who was killed in 2009 and also worked on the problems of residents of Chechnya. We have updated the apps on Android and Android. href="https://apps.apple.com/ru/app/%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%B2%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%B7%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9-%D1%83%D0%B7%D0%B5%D0%BB/id1154933161">IOS! We would be grateful for criticism and ideas for development both in Google Play/App Store and on KU pages in social networks. Without installing a VPN, you can read us on Telegram (in Dagestan, Chechnya and Ingushetia - with VPN). Using a VPN, you can continue reading "Caucasian Knot" on the website as usual, and on social networks: Facebook**, Instagram**, "VKontakte", "Odnoklassniki" and X. You can watch the "Caucasian Knot" video on YouTube. Send messages to +49 157 72317856 on WhatsApp**, to the same number on Telegram, or write to @Caucasian_Knot.

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Translated automatically via Google translate from https://www.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/420901