The embattled Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta suffered one more "battle casualty" when 25-year-old Anastasiya Baburova was shot and killed in downtown Moscow. Her murder seems to be the last straw for Novaya Gazeta.
In a November 2007 interview, just before receiving CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, Dmitry Muratov, the editor of the embattled Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, recalled the loss of three colleagues to work-related murders in six years. "We have suffered war-like casualties," Muratov said.
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On Monday, Novaya suffered one more "battle casualty"–25-year-old Anastasiya Baburova, a student in her last year studying journalism at Moscow State University who had worked for the paper part-time since October, covering the rise of ultranationalist groups in Russia, was shot and killed in downtown Moscow. Baburova was talking to human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov after a news conference he had given to criticize the early release of a Russian ex-colonel imprisoned for committing a grave crime in Chechnya. It was 3 p.m. on a busy street when the journalist and the lawyer were approached by an unknown gunman. He first shot Markelov in the back of the head, then shot Baburova when she tried to intervene. Markelov died at the scene; Baburova, several hours later at a Moscow hospital.
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