Moscow ? As mourners buried investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya on Tuesday, President Vladimir V. Putin, the target of much of her criticism, condemned both her slaying and her reporting, suggesting her death may have been ordered by exiles to make Russia look bad.

At Politkovskaya’s funeral, attended by close to 1,000 mourners, the mood of sadness seemed tinged with a broader sense of discouragement for Russia’s political future.

“Who is next? This is the question asked today by thousands of journalists, human-rights activists, liberal politicians and progressive people in general,” Yuri Chernichenko, deputy chairman of the Moscow Union of Writers, said in an interview after the funeral service. “The answer is we don’t know. But we know that this is not the first and not the last funeral after which we will be asking that question.”

Many who gathered on a cold and drizzly day at a Soviet-era funeral hall in suburban Moscow praised Politkovskaya’s courage and concern for the unfortunate.

“I heard that Anna Politkovskaya was on a list of ‘enemies of Russia.’ But it’s obvious that she … was a real patriot, and she died for the truth,” said Eduard Sagalayev, head of the Association of Independent Broadcasters.

Speaking at a news conference during a visit to Dresden, Germany, where he once was based as a KGB agent, Putin called the Novaya Gazeta reporter’s contract-style slaying Saturday “a crime of loathsome brutality.” But he drew the ire of Politkovskaya’s admirers when he also portrayed himself as a victim and implied her articles had damaged Russia.

People pay their last respects to slain journalist Anna Politkovskaya during a funeral ceremony in Moscow. Politkovskaya, 48, who had criticized President Vladimir Putin and Russia's conduct in Chechnya, was fatally shot in her apartment building Saturday in an apparent contract killing.

“This murder has done more damage to Russia – and the current authorities of Russia and Chechnya, which she has been covering lately in her work – than Politkovskaya’s articles,” Putin said, in remarks broadcast on state-run television.

“Putin said an outrageous thing today about Anna,” Sergei Sokolov, deputy editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, said in an evening interview after Putin’s remarks were broadcast. “What he said today is so outrageous that it is unworthy of a man, and it is unworthy of the president of Russia.”

Putin also appeared to endorse the idea, promoted since Sunday by pro-Kremlin media, that advocates of a Ukrainian-style “Orange Revolution” had ordered Politkovskaya’s killing to advance their cause. Admirers of the slain journalist have described that theory as ridiculous and offensive.

Politkovskaya, 48, was known in particular for her reporting on human-rights abuses in war-torn Chechnya. She was killed in her apartment building by gunshots to the chest and head after a Saturday afternoon shopping trip.

Russia is the third most deadly country for journalists, after Iraq and Algeria, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, which says Politkovskaya was at least the 43rd reporter killed for her work in Russia since 1993.