"With crises brewing in Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, no one has had time to notice the recent escalation of the political dispute between Russia and Georgia, or to ponder the political consequences of Europe's increasing reliance on Russian gas, or to worry much about minor matters like the deterioration of press freedom in Russia. Critics of Anna Politkovskaya's writings complained, on occasion, that her gloom could be overbearing: She was one of those journalists who saw harbingers of catastrophe in every story. Still, it is hard for me not to write about her murder in exactly the same pessimistic and foreboding tone that she herself would have used. It is so much like one of the stories she would have written herself."

Anne Applebaum on Anna Politkovskaya in Slate.