Comrade Capitalism

With Russia’s incursion into neighboring Ukraine, Cold War tensions are back. At the centre of events sits one man: President Vladimir Putin, Russia’s ruler for the past 14 years.

Opponents of Putin have leveled charges of cronyism and corruption against him for years. Though it is widely known that politically connected “oligarchs” grew rich in the 1990s, specifics about how a wealthy elite profit under Putin have been thin. In a continuing investigation, called “Comrade Capitalism,” Reuters detailed for the first time how the president’s associates actually extract money from the vast flow of state funds in Putin’s Russia.