Leading Russian Dissident Dies At 88

Agence-France Presse reports:

Yelena Bonner, who died in Boston aged 88, was a Soviet voice of conscience who fought alongside her husband Andrei Sakharov before leaving Russia years later decrying Vladimir Putin's rule.

After the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Sakharov died in 1989, Bonner helped organize Russia's nascent rights movement and became a keeper of her husband's legacy which carried great weight in the West.

But she eventually lost her faith in modern Russia, horrified first by the brutality of the 1994-96 war in Chechnya and later by vanishing freedoms under ex-KGB man and former president Putin, Russia's current premier.

Last year, hers was the first signature under an open letter titled simply "Putin Must Go."