Nina Litvinova, a widely respected Soviet-era dissident who spent six decades fighting state totalitarianism, has died by suicide at the age of 80, leaving behind a stark final indictment of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Nexta TV reported on X. Her cousin, the well-known journalist Masha Slonim, published Litvinova’s farewell letter on social media with the brief, powerful caption: “Putin killed her”.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. In her final written message, Litvinova expressed total despair over the current geopolitical and domestic trajectory of Russia: “I must leave, life has become unbearable for me. Ever since Putin attacked Ukraine and began killing innocent people, while thousands in our country are endlessly imprisoned for opposing war and murder…”. Litvinova began her activism in the 1960s, routinely risking imprisonment to protest Soviet human rights abuses, distribute banned literature, and coordinate aid for political prisoners. In recent years, she focused her efforts on providing legal and material support to anti-war prisoners inside Russia, collaborating extensively with Memorial – Russia’s premier human rights organization which the Russian Supreme Court subsequently designated as an “extremist organization” and shut down.