Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was an American-Russian journalist and human rights activist, who reported on political and social events in Russia, in particular, the Second Chechen War (1999–2005).

The Beslan school siege was a terrorist attack that started on 1 September 2004. It lasted three days, and involved the imprisonment of more than 1,100 people as hostages, ending with the deaths of 334 people, 186 of them children, as well as 31 of the attackers. It is considered the deadliest school shooting in history.