A person lays flowers at the site where lawyer Stanislav Markelov and reporter Anastasia Baburova were shot in Moscow January 20, 2009. The writing on the paper on the wall reads: "Budanov and his FSB protegees are killers and belong in prison", referring to Russian Colonel Yuri Budanov, who was convicted of the murder of a Chechen woman, whose family Markelov represented. REUTERS/Denis Sinyakov
Hopes for a less violent year for journalists in Russia were crushed at the very start of 2009, with the brutal murder of young Novaya Gazeta reporter Anastasia Baburova in a Moscow street on the afternoon of 19 January.
Baburova, a journalism student working part-time at the Gazeta, was accompanying human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov to a metro station when an unidentified man stepped up to Markelov from behind and shot him point blank in the back of the head, killing ...
