EDITORIAL
Putin’s Mafia Don for the Kiddies
We learned recently that Vasily Yakemenko, the founder of the pro-Putin youth cult Nashi and Putin’s director of youth policy, has an extensive background in organized crime. Vedemosti reported that in 1994 he founded a company called Akbars along with five partners, each of whom was a convicted racketeer in the Complex 29 mafia group based in Tatarstan, one of the bloodiest criminal groups in Russia. Vedemosti learned about this event from a government database.
To say we were not surprised is the mother of all overstatements.