In a Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty interview two days before her murder, she revealed she was preparing an exposé on FSB torture in Chechnya.
On 5 October 2006, just two days before her assassination, Anna Politkovskaya gave an interview to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty's Russian Service in which she disclosed that she was preparing a major investigative article exposing the use of torture by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) against detainees in Chechnya.
In the interview, she discussed specific allegations and evidence she had gathered documenting systematic abuse of prisoners, part of her long-running effort to hold Russian security and military forces accountable for human rights violations committed during and after the Chechen wars. She spoke with characteristic bluntness about the dangers she faced and her determination to publish the findings regardless of the risks.
This interview has taken on particular historical weight because of its timing: it stands as one of the last public statements she made before being shot dead in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building on 7 October 2006. Many observers and colleagues have pointed to this interview as evidence that her killing was directly connected to the specific, imminent publication of damaging material about the FSB, rather than being a response to her body of work in general.
The unfinished exposé, and the questions surrounding what she had uncovered, became a focal point of subsequent investigations and international scrutiny into both her murder and the broader pattern of violence against journalists in Russia.