Prominent Putin Critic Dies At 77

Russian activist Marina Salye, who had been a thorn in Vladimir Putin's side for nearly two decades, died of a heart attack on March 21 at the age of 77. Salye, a local lawmaker in St. Petersburg in the early 1990s, pushed for Putin's resignation as the city's deputy mayor after implicating him in a multimillion-dollar kickback scheme. She revived those allegations in 2000, backed up with material from her legislative investigation, just as Putin was assuming the Russian presidency. In this interview with RFE/RL in 2010, Salye revealed that she went into hiding in 2000 because she feared for her life.