There's No Separating Wealth and Power in Russia

There's nothing sensational about high-level corruption in Russia these days, and it's unlikely that Alexei Navalny's investigation into the luxurious lifestyle of Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev will improve the anti-corruption activist's chances of being elected Russian president in 2018. The exceptional piece of journalistic work, however, does make an important contribution to our understanding of how graft works at the pinnacle of the Russian state hierarchy -- and what these arrangements say about the Putin team's long-term plans and geopolitical outlook.

The investigation, performed by Navalny's group, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, builds on previous work by Russian investigative journalists, who had already revealed a network of non-profit organizations administered by the prime minister's law school classmates, in part to Medvedev's benefit.