‘I wanted to save her from herself’ In a new memoir about her childhood in Chechnya, Lana Estemirova remembers the life, work, and assassination of her mother

‘I wanted to save her from herself’ In a new memoir about her childhood in Chechnya, Lana Estemirova remembers the life, work, and assassination of her mother

Growing up in Chechnya in the 1990s and early 2000s, Lana Estemirova knew that her mother, renowned human rights activist Natalia Estemirova, had a very important job. She often went to work with Natalia at the Memorial human rights group’s Grozny office, and overheard her conversations about the abuses sweeping the republic amid the Chechen Wars. Then, when Lana was 15 years old, her mother was kidnapped outside their apartment block and brutal…