Born Anna Mazepa in New York City in 1958 to Ukrainian Soviet diplomats, she held a United States passport her whole life and grew up in sheltered central Moscow. She studied journalism at Moscow State University, writing her thesis on the poet Marina Tsvetaeva, and an early job at an aviation magazine gave her unrestricted travel that exposed her to the realities of a collapsing Soviet Union.

At Novaya Gazeta she became a fearless chronicler of the Second Chechen War, traveling into active conflict zones and documenting abuses by all sides. She endured a mock execution during a 2001 detention, was allegedly poisoned in 2004 while trying to reach the Beslan siege, and refused to flee despite constant threats. On October 7, 2006, Vladimir Putin's birthday, she was shot dead in the elevator of her Moscow apartment building.

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