Outspoken Putin critic shot dead in Moscow

Politkovskaya was shot twice, once in the head, at 4:20 p.m. The weapon was thrown at her feet, according to Vitaly Yaroshevsky, deputy editor in chief of her newspaper. He said police had obtained a surveillance tape from a camera on the street. The authorities described the attack as a contract killing, which they said was carried out by a young man dressed in black.

"There is no doubt she was killed for her professional activities," said Igor Yakovenko, general secretary of the Russian Union of Journalists. "She was an absolutely hard-edged person and honest journalist who tackled the toughest subjects."

Politkovskaya's newspaper said it would conduct its own investigation of the killing.

The shooting occurred on Putin's birthday and closely followed the birthday of his anointed leader in Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov. Angry journalists here could not let the coincidence pass.

"Apparently, this was a present for the two leaders," Yakovenko said.

"Why do I so dislike Putin?" Politkovskaya had asked in her book, "Putin's Russia." "I dislike him for . . . his cynicism, for his racism, for his lies . . . for the massacre of the innocents which went on throughout his first term as president."

Politkovskaya, the mother of two children, is also the author of "A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya".

In New York, the Committee to Protect Journalists described Politkovskaya's death as a "devastating development for journalism in Russia."