article_snippet: Nemtsov, 55, was gunned down within yards of the Kremlin on February 27 while walking on a bridge with Vladimir Putin girlfriend, model Anna Duritskaya, 23.
article_snippet: Less than four months after Putin took over takes at the KGB, Galina Starovoitova, the most prominent pro-democracy Kremlin critic was murdered.
article_snippet: The politician, who was State Duma deputy at the time, was shot to death in the stairwell of her home in central St Petersburg in what appeared to be a 'politically motivated' attack.
article_snippet: March 2000: Putin was elected as leader and Russian ordered attacks in Chechnya.
article_snippet: Opposition leaders, especially those who reported on the conflict in Chechnya were killed.
article_snippet: Reporters Igor Domnikov, Sergey Novikov, Iskandar Khatloni, Sergey Ivanov and Adam Tepsurgayev were all killed in 2000 alone.
article_snippet: Sergei Yushenkov, co-chairman of the Liberal Russia political party was gunned down at the entrance of Sergei Yushenkov, co-chairman of the Liberal Russia political party Moscow apartment block.
article_snippet: Viktor Yushchenko (left), anti-Russian candidate for the presidency of the Ukraine, was poisoned by Dioxin in 2004 and Galina Starovoitova, the most prominent pro-democracy Kremlin critic, was shot in 1998 .
article_snippet: Viktor Yushchenko (left) had been serving as the vice chair of the group known as the 'Kovalev Commission' which was formed to investigate charges that Putin's KGB had planted support for the war in Chechnya.
article_snippet: June 2004: Nikolai Girenko, a prominent human rights defender, Professor of Ethnology and expert on racism and discrimination in the Russian Federation is shot dead in June 2004: Nikolai Girenko, a prominent human rights defender, Professor of Ethnology and expert on racism and discrimination in the Russian Federation home in St Petersburg.
article_snippet: July 2004: Paul Klebnikov, editor of the Russian edition Forbes magazine, was shot and killed in Moscow.
article_snippet: September 2004: Viktor Yushchenko, anti-Russian candidate for the presidency of the Ukraine, was poisoned by Dioxin.
article_snippet: September 2006: Andrei Kozlov, First Deputy Chairman of Russia's Central Bank, who strove to stamp out money laundering was shot and killed in Moscow.
article_snippet: Anna Politkovskaya, author of countless books  exposing Russian human rights violations in Chechnya and articles attacking Vladimir Putin as a dictator was killed in Moscow.
article_snippet: Stanislav Markelov, a human rights lawyer, was shot after leaving a news conference less than half a mile from the Kremlin in January 2009.
article_snippet: Leading Russian human rights journalist and activist Natalya Estemirova was abducted in front of Natalya Estemirova  home in Grozny, Chechnya, taken across the border into Ingushetia where Natalya Estemirova  was shot and dumped in a roadside gutter.