Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Why Putin’s Russia Is Dissolving

The Moscow Times

In Moscow at a conference for young Russian journalists last week, I met Eduard Mochalov, who differed from most of the participants in having spent much of his working life as a farmer. He retains the ruddy countenance and the strong, chapped hands of the outdoor worker in a hard climate — in his case, that of the Chuvash Republic, about 700 kilometers east of Moscow.

Mochalov’s story is that when thieves stole some of his cattle and pigs, he protested to the authorities, only to find himself in jail for eight months based on a wrongful accusation. Maddened by what he considered the result of corruption behind the scenes, he protested all the way up to President Vladimir Putin, going so far as to appear in Red Square with a placard telling his story. As he pursued justice, his farm went untended.

And so he turned to journalism. “I had no choice. The whole administration was corrupt, nothing to be done but fight them with words,” he told me. Four years ago he founded a newspaper that he boldly named Vzyatka, which in Russian means bribe. It comes out nearly every month and is replete with investigations and denunciations of corruption in his locality. He prints some 20,000 copies and gives them away. Demand, he says, hugely outpaces supply.