Daughter of veteran Scottish journalist Sandy Gall, Carlotta Gall started her newspaper career with "The Moscow Times", in Moscow, in 1994, and covered the first war in Chechnya intensively for the paper, among other stories all over the former Soviet Union. She also freelanced for British papers ("The Independent", "The Times", and "The Sunday Times") as well as American publications ("USA Today", "Newsweek" and "The New York Times").