Her book compiling investigative reporting on corruption, human rights abuses, and authoritarianism under Vladimir Putin was published.
In February 2006, Anna Politkovskaya's book Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy was published in English translation, bringing together years of her investigative journalism into a searing indictment of the political system that had developed under President Vladimir Putin.
The book detailed systemic corruption within the Russian government and military, documented human rights abuses committed during the Chechen wars, and argued that Russia was regressing from its post-Soviet democratic aspirations toward a new authoritarianism marked by state control of media, suppression of dissent, and impunity for officials who committed abuses. It drew on her extensive firsthand reporting from Chechnya as well as her broader coverage of Russian political and social life.
The book was widely praised internationally for its unflinching honesty and moral clarity, and it cemented Politkovskaya's reputation in the West as one of the most important chroniclers of post-Soviet Russian authoritarianism. Within Russia, however, the book and its author faced hostility from state media and government officials, who dismissed her work as biased or unpatriotic.
Published just months before her assassination in October 2006, Putin's Russia stands as a kind of testament and warning, and it remains one of the most frequently cited English-language sources for understanding the erosion of press freedom and civil liberties in Russia during the early Putin era.