How Ivan Golunov Cost Putin More Than Robert Mueller | Opinion
Michał Murawski
On 6/14/19 at 1:51 PM EDT
m sitting at a café near Moscow's Kursk railway station on a dark winter afternoon with Ivan Golunov, the top Russian investigative journalist who was arrested, tortured—and then, incredibly, released in the wake of mass public and media protests, earlier this week. But this is earlier still, December 2017. Ivan is not yet world-famous; he's merely extremely dogged, highly respected by fellow journalists and incredibly good at what he does. He shrugs off my attempts at small talk and immediately launches into our appointed topic: pavements.
Golunov's investigations deal almost exclusively with the most mundane and unglamorous issues imaginable, which nevertheless affect the everyday lives of millions of ordinary people. He does not poke his nose into national security, he does not travel to Chechnya or to Donbass, and he certainly does not and try to figure out who shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.
His hunting grounds are paving stones, micro-credit schemes, abuses of power in schools and hospitals, internal politics in regional museums, garbage disposal, social media monitors, and most recently, dodgy dealings in the funeral business. He works by taking stones, turning them over (often literally) and digging through the dirt beneath.
Read more at: https://www.newsweek.com/how-ivan-golunov-cost-putin-more-robert-mueller-opinion-1444097
Putin's popularity is down, add one more country that would benefit from higher oil prices!
Russian president Putin fires 2 top police officers involved in arrest of investigative journalist
Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY Published 1:08 p.m. ET June 13, 2019
Prominent Russian investigative journalist Ivan Golunov, greets colleagues and his supporters as he leaves a Investigative Committee building in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, June 11, 2019. In a surprising turnaround, Russia's police chief on Tuesday dropped all charges against a prominent investigative reporter whose detention sparked public outrage and promised to go after the police officers who tried to frame the journalist as a drug-dealer. (Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko, AP)
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday fired two top police generals involved in a criminal drug case against a Russian investigative journalist whose arrest had sparked five days of widespread protests.
The journalist, Ivan Golunov, 36, was released on Wednesday, six days after his arrest on suspicion of possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute.
Golunov, who faced up to 20 years in prison, had alleged that police planted the drugs on him. He was also hospitalized at one point for injuries allegedly sustained during his arrest.
More: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/06/13/russian-journalist-putin-fires-2-police-officers-reporters-arrest/1444974001/
Ivan Golunov names police officer who beat him in custody
8:21 am, June 14, 2019
Source: Beware, Sobchak!
Meduza correspondent Ivan Golunov has identified the police officer who beat him after he was arrested on fabricated charges. During a live online interview with media personality Ksenia Sobchak, Golunov said the officer was named Maxim Umetbayev.
https://meduza.io/en/news/2019/06/14/ivan-golunov-names-police-officer-who-beat-him-in-custody
I'm not sure if Putin comes back from all of this.
