On Oct. 7, 2006, Novaya Gazeta journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot dead in her apartment building in Moscow. 18 years ago today. The newspaper and the independent reporting it represented are gone in Russia now, too. Also today, Putin turns 72.

I’m increasingly convinced all the trouble started. In 1993 it gave Putin a blue print to rebuild authoritarianism, and created a culture of legal impunity where those in power and connected to it were served by the law not restrained by it.

I wish him the death he fears